


lights down low

by crackers4jenn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 16:21:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/968045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackers4jenn/pseuds/crackers4jenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dean comes to, it's with a fuzzy, head-pounding disorientation. He's on his back, on the ground, that much he immediately knows, where there's an overgrown lawn cushioning what must've been one hell of a landing. (Or, my excuse to do a canon-compliant Dean/Cas rom-com.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	lights down low

**Author's Note:**

> All the thanks in the world go out to alexwhitman25, who has been the best encourager and supporter (YOU'RE THE TURTLE, MAN) and to elspunko for planting beautiful seeds of ideas in my brain. You guys are the best!

**Title:** lights down low  
 **Fandom:** Supernatural  
 **Summary:** _When Dean comes to, it's with a fuzzy, head-pounding disorientation. He's on his back, on the ground, that much he immediately knows, where there's an overgrown lawn cushioning what must've been one hell of a landing._ (Or, my excuse to do a canon-compliant Dean/Cas rom-com.)  
 **Characters/Pairing:** Dean/Castiel and some background Sam/Amelia  
 **Word Count:** 40,000

Wind whips around Dean, fast and so loud he can barely hear himself think over it. Right in front of them the portal is a big, bright, glowing tear in the universe.

"Come on!" he yells over his shoulder, at Cas, who's starting to stumble over the rough terrain instead of hike. That last fight with a round of Leviathan took something out of both of them, has Dean feeling drained down to the bone, but he's got his mind set on moving forward, on getting out, this hyper-focused tunnel vision. They're so close.

A few rocks slide out from under Cas' feet as they take that last, small, uphill trek, and he goes down, landing on his hands and knees. Dean stops just long enough to offer him his own hand before he lunges halfway through the portal, but as soon as he's inside it, he knows they've only got _seconds_. Already he feels himself being sucked through to the other side.

A vague, fleeting prayer flits through his head, that this thing leads to where he hopes like hell it's leading.

He shouts, "We gotta go!" at Cas from the two or so feet away that he is, stretching his arm out as far as he can manage. Cas wearily raises his head and eyes the lifeline Dean's offering. For long, terrible seconds the world stills and Dean stops hearing the wind and everything whites out around him while Cas seems to consider whether or not he's going to let himself be led out of here -- out of Purgatory, which has wound up being one sucky vacation spot.

Just when doubt's starting to set in, making a mess of emotions lob its way up his throat like he might call out or do something stupid like non-con this exit up, Cas lifts his gaze the rest of the ways, landing on Dean. As soon as their eyes meet, Dean knows Cas is right there with him. He's got him. About time, too; the portal yanks at Dean like nothing he's ever felt before, a pissed off, vacuum-tight suction that feels hooked into him from the inside.

Cas thrusts out his hand so they're holding on to each other around the wrist, and as Dean is finally, _finally_ pulled, so is Castiel.

The world really does go white, then, white and weightless, and Cas is the only solid thing he feels around him until they're spit out on the other side.

Then it goes black.

 

&

 

When Dean comes to, it's with a fuzzy, head-pounding disorientation. He's on his back, on the ground, that much he immediately knows, where there's an overgrown lawn cushioning what must've been one hell of a landing. His whole body cramps up with a pain that is vague but persistent enough that it's what rouses him out of unconsciousness, fast and sudden. He rolls into a sitting position, as far as he can manage, anyway, one hand bracing against the ground and dirt and the other shielding eyes sensitive to the sunlight.

Quickly it comes back to him. Purgatory. The portal.

It hurts like a bitch, but Dean springs to his feet, ignoring the way his stomach pitches upwards, woozy and threatening. He blinks until he can see without flecks of black taking up most of his vision and the throbbing in his skull dies down, holding his left arm close because all of a sudden he remembers he's storing Benny in there and hell if he knows if essence-of-vampire is fragile or not.

"Cas," he calls under his breath, pitching it behind him where he expects Cas to be. All he knows is, they came through the portal. They landed here. Where ever the hell 'here' even is. It's time to motor.

But it's silent around him, except for a constant, faraway chirp of some birds and the noisy drone of traffic. Dean twists, and looks, and doesn't find Cas. What he does see is that he's in someone's backyard. There's a kitschy-looking house, creaky back porch and everything, with a friggin' bird bath to boot, but no Castiel.

He doesn't panic. He does, however, crouch a little, not wanting to get caught looking like some neighborhood perv, and hiss out, "Cas!" again.

The house's back door swings open. Dean nearly trips over himself trying to scramble out of view, but something stops him cold.

"Dean?"

Sam jogs the four steps down that back porch with a lit up smile. Or, some monster wearing his brother's face does, and it's that possibility -- because, really, what else could it be? Dean just so happened to get popped out of Purgatory and land, of all the freaking places, right in his kid brother's lap? yeah, okay -- that has him reaching back behind him, down into the waistband of his jeans where he's still got a knife.

Something must show on his face because Sam slows and frowns and starts to hold his hands warily out in front of him. "Woah. What's up with you?"

Dean grips the handle of the knife and brings it out to show he has it. Sam's eyes grow wide, his stance becoming more leery.

"Who the hell are you?" Dean demands.

Sam laughs. It's a small, careful sound, meaning he's tiptoeing his way around Dean's crazy. "You okay, man? You look--" He derails that to instead marvel, "Where the hell did you even _come_ from?"

Something flashes across Sam's face as he says it -- that familiar _good Samaritan_ concern Sam gets like even though the world is crap, it's his to fix -- that makes a choked off noise catch in Dean's throat. Still, he tightens his hold, tightens his jaw, tightens up everything. "Don't make me ask again."

Whereas Sam's eyes were narrowed before with worry, now he looks downright spooked. "Dean. It's me." He goes to take a step forward, still some three feet of distance between them, but when Dean jerks back, tense and skittish, he holds his hands up higher instead to show Dean he doesn't mean any harm. "Look. It's just me. No weapons. Okay?"

Instead of letting Sam closer, Dean bites out, "Prove it."

Sam shakes his head out. Maybe it's not his brother, but it's one hell of a copy either way. Long-haired freak. He's got bangs that'd make Farrah Fawcett roll over in her grave. "Prove what?" he asks, nice and calm. Too calm, Dean thinks. The blade's practically glistening between them in this shiny, suburban hell.

"Prove you're Sam," he says through his teeth.

Sam snorts. "Dean, you're acting--" _Like one of us here has a brain_ , is what Dean's thinking, just as he lunges forward and jabs his knife at Sam, but it's not with the intent to do any real damage. Well, unless the son-of-a-bitch is a monster walking around in his brother's skin. Then he's all for a nasty and painful ganking.

Sam pulls away, but not before Dean's sliced open a decent-sized cut along his forearm. Right away, a line of blood trickles out, so he definitely passes that test. He's no shifter.

"What the hell! Dean! What's gotten into you?" he's saying, shrill and pissy, but Dean ignores it, putting the blade between his teeth for a place to hold it while he gestures for Sam to comply.

"Holy water. Come on," he says around the handle when Sam isn't immediately forthcoming.

"Seriously," Sam says, slow and some ten kinds of freaked, "what the hell is wrong with you right now?"

Only a little bit muffled, he insists, "You know the drill."

All at once, Sam's eyes widen even further. He sneaks a glance behind him, at the porch, then scoops his hand around Dean's elbow to pull him to the side of the house, away from any windows.

Dean yanks away before they've hardly even gone anywhere. "Dude, no touchy," he barks, finally sheathing his knife back where it belongs. Sam holds up those _fine, fine, I'm not touching_ hands again, letting Dean follow, though Dean does so with his eyes on Sam the whole time, alert for anything.

"Wait, so. Were you attacked or something?" Sam asks right away, in this scandalized whisper.

Dean reprioritizes his need for holy water (and, come to think of it, Borax) for just a second. Sam looms large in front of him, and now that he at least knows this isn't a shifter, his brain spins in a new attempt to process his surroundings.

Then Sam reaches out with one of his ginormous mitts and clamps down on Dean's shoulder in a brotherly fashion.

"You okay?"

Dean jerks out of the grasp with a glare, walls hiked back up. Something isn't feeling right. Problem is, he's still got jet-lag from hell, from his flight out of Purgatory, so he can't laser in on _what_ feels wrong exactly, only that it does. "Who are you?" he demands once more, only because it feels like solid ground.

"You keep--" Sam stops and pauses long enough to meet Dean's eyes, tucking his hands up under his arms. He stares at Dean like Dean's some awesome new specimen he's poking at under a microscope. "You don't know who I am." And that is less of a question and more of a realization.

"Oh, I know who you are," Dean throws back, grounding it out. "I just don't know what you are. Yet," he adds, and intends to be threatening with it, but Sam just casts this gaze off to the side that means his thoughts are elsewhere. Dean watches, and something new this time fills through him, something cold. It's like when he turned around in Purgatory just as soon as they got there, him and Cas both, and Cas was already gone. He couldn't make sense of it at the time, couldn't feel out Cas anywhere in the darkness, but he knew then and there he was in for one hell of a shitstorm. It's the same feeling now.

Sam's eyes on are on his again, sudden and sharp. "That whole... holy water/demon check? Dean, we don't do that anymore. For, like, years."

"Of course we do," Dean argues instantly. The habit is as ingrained in him as sleeping. "You die, or disappear for days at a time, first thing you do is the damn check. What the hell are you talking about?" Stronger this time, Dean wonders if this is actually his brother. If maybe he's still in Purgatory. Or if this is some fucked up side effect of being ripped through a portal.

And, awesome, now Sam's looking at him in a new way too. Less like he's worried Dean smacked his head somewhere and more like Dean's the answer to the goddamn divine. That thought comes with a pulse of worry attached, because, seriously, _where the fuck is Cas_?

"Wow. I think. This is _crazy_ , but. Dean, I think you're not, you know. _You_."

Dean snorts at him. "You're the one who's not you, dude."

"No, I mean." He leans in closer, dropping his voice, which had begun to rise in all his revelatory excitement. Dean angles away automatically, not liking his personal space crowded like that, not after he's spent so long surviving on the opposite in Purgatory. Sam doesn't even notice. "Dean, we don't hunt," he says, like that much should already be clear. Also like it's the starting point of what will inevitably be a very long spiel, one Dean is quick to cut off.

"Woah, woah. Hold up. We don't hunt?" he repeats disbelievingly. "Yeah. You're not Sam. No way my brother would say that. So, again. You want to tell me what you are?"

Sam rolls his eyes. There is actual eye-rolling. "We're hunters, we're just." He searches for the right word. "Retired," is what he comes up with, and good thing he winces saying it, otherwise Dean would've done it for him. Even so.

"Uh, no," he says back with a mental dry heave. "I got to cut you again?"

The reminder of that makes Sam look down at his arm, where the blood's started to scab over already. He stares for a second, like he's trying to connect some seriously messed up dots, before catching Dean's eyes again. "You hunt?" This time, it's a carefully phrased question. Not an accusation, exactly, but like he's testing Dean. Like there's a right or wrong answer here and Sam already knows what that answer should be.

"Vocationally," he shoots right at him with a tight, ain't-my-life-swell grin. More cocky, he adds, "Yeah, and for leisure too."

Those dots Sam was trying to connect must suddenly pull up the full picture for him; he studies Dean more closely. "Like I said. You're not you."

"Yeah? You might want to float that one by the Purgatory crowd. They're gonna be pretty pissed, they find out they spent all that time trying to kill some other Dean Winchester."

And then it's like, not only does that mental connect-the-dots Sam was working on expose the entire picture, but that picture gets blown up and spot-lighted with a fancy decorative lamp. "Purgatory," he breathes out, like his mind's being blown right now. "Dean. But."

"Yeah," Dean says, and he can't help it, he warms up a little. They've still got a ways to go before Dean buys that this is his brother, his exactly, but he's already halfway there. It's been a long time since he saw Sam. Longer than long. He hadn't let himself miss him before, but now... "I'm back," he manages.

Instead of the expected waterworks, or them hugging it out, rom-com style, Sam's jaw goes slack. It's awe he's staring at Dean with, but not the good kind. The something-is-seriously-screwed-up-here kind. "You went to Purgatory five years ago."

"Damn." Dean lets out a low whistling noise. At the same time, something squeezes in his chest, making it feel constricted and tight. "That long, huh? Time flies when you're running for your life. You miss me?" Under the needling tone is some real strain. It felt like a long time down there in monsterland, but it's not like he had a wall calendar he could mark days off on. Five years, though? Jesus.

"You're not hearing me. Dean, you went to Purgatory, yeah. But you came back. _Five years ago_."

Somewhere a firetruck goes wailing past, sirens blaring. The _thing_ that felt wrong inside him suddenly comes roaring back, and with this newly given info, it almost starts to make sense. It does make sense, actually. Dean's in some kind of bizarro world. Of course.

Dean backs up, away from Sam. Bizarro-Sam. Whoever.

"Dean," he starts, but Dean squeezes his eyes shut and raises his head to the sky.

"Castiel, who art maybe as screwed as I am," he prays out loud. "Any time you feel like winging your ass over, that'd be great!"

Sam's staring at him when he opens his eyes again, almost like there is something more worrying about Dean praying to his angel than anything else so far. Yeah, well. Join the club.

"Cas," Sam repeats. It comes out stiffly. Curiously. "As in, the angel. Castiel?"

Dean doesn't bother sparing him a second glance, or an answer. Instead he makes his way back over to where he came to at. Maybe there's something there that -- hell, he doesn't even know. Can get him to where he needs to be going? Take him somewhere that is not this alternate world where his brother lives in a friggin' two-story house in the suburbs?

"Cas!" he shouts again when a long beat passes and there's no recognizable flutter of wings.

Sam makes a noise of protest and hauls his body weight around him, so that he's stopped Dean dead in his tracks. "Dean, listen to me," he tries, verging on alarm, but before either of them can make another move, that same back door Sam came out of earlier creaks open. Both of their attentions swing around at the sound of a third party, a voice so familiar, Dean could weep.

"Dean?"

Relief rises in Dean so suddenly, he feels dizzy with it. "Cas, thank god," he breathes out.

Except as soon as he gets a good look at him, that relief dries up on the spot, replaced with an overwhelming dread once more. The Cas easing down the porch steps looks like his Cas, sure. If his Cas was some poor, domestic schmuck. He doesn't have the coat on, or the looney bin scrubs, and is dressed instead like one of those all-American douches you'd find puttering around in their open garage, wife smoking up hamburgers on a grill around the corner.

"You're here," he says, concern clear as day in his tone and how he's staring at Dean like Dean is a rubber band about to snap. "Why?" Dean wonders how he mistook him for his Cas in the first place, because this guy, there's something off with his voice. It doesn't have that same gravel to it, like everything Cas says, dude's saying it like he's in a one-sided pissing contest. This Cas sounds more like the sorry bastard Castiel possessed in the first place.

Sam says, "I tried to tell you," right there next to him, and Dean thinks, okay. Let the panic begin.

 

&

 

Dean can't stay still. He's dragging a hand across his mouth, he's pacing, he's stopping and starting up again so often, and so restlessly, that Sam's started eying the linoleum floor like he expects there'll be track marks soon.

They're in the kitchen. They are in this crappy, mostly gutted kitchen that has a damn magnet-adorned refrigerator and these flappy, flowery curtains above a sink window, the kind that only go down halfway, and Sam? Sam is sitting at a splintered, rickety-legged table that, get this, has a plaid patterned cover over it. Like something out of some spread in _Better Homes and Gardens_ or whatever. Dean has both the heebs and the jeebs, okay.

Sam passed the holy water test and was fine with a squirt of Borax to his bodily parts, if not fleetingly pissy about that, so Dean knows this is really him. Or, well. Maybe not his Sam, not really, but it's not a monster wearing his brother as a meatsuit either, so at least he has that small comfort to keep his mind from fully going boom.

"Dean. Stop," Sam finally says, watching him with apologetic, pleading eyes.

Dean does stop, but only to slide heavily onto the chair beside Sam. It has a cushion on it. This is how Dean knows he's in bizarro land, because in what lifetime would he allow his brother to put cushions on their dining room chairs? In what lifetime would they even have dining room chairs?

"This," he hisses at Sam, swiping a hand to make his meaning clear, "is not okay! Nothing here is okay, just so you know."

They've had this conversation several times over. After talking Dean inside and whisking Cas off towards what looked like a fully stocked library -- Dean feels weird just thinking about that; what kind of house has a _library_ , christ -- they had themselves one of them good, long, air-clearing chats, but Dean feels no more calmed by it now than he did the hour ago this all started.

Their best guess so far is time travel. How, Dean doesn't know. For one, it doesn't explain where Cas went, the Cas he had a hold on when they booked it out of Purgatory. It doesn't explain why there's no other-Dean around clamoring for attention, except for the fact that, according to Sam, the Dean here goes away for months at a time to sow his wild oats, or whatever. It doesn't explain a damn thing.

"Just, try and calm down," Sam suggests pointlessly, angling himself Dean's way, knobby knees and all, like he thinks being closer will prevent another round of _what the fuck is wrong here_ agitation from taking over. He scrubs his own hand over his mouth and tries to get a grip here. "We'll, I don't know. We'll figure it out. We'll dig out some books, we'll use the computer--"

"And google, what? 'Cause it ain't like they got a website for this sorta thing. Unless they do," he automatically reconsiders. Five years into the future. It might be the friggin' _Jetsons_ out there for all Dean knows.

Of course, the last time Dean was set down and left five years into the future, he'd woken up to the actual end of days, so. This is almost a trade-up. At least there aren't any Croats. Unless there are Croats.

And that, by the way, that whole fun apocalyptic warzone, Dean remembers, was at the hands of an angel locked in a figurative dick-measuring contest with him. Maybe this is something like that. It might be the angels.

He'd ask Cas, but the way Sam tells it, the Cas here's gone human. That, too, makes Dean think of his other sojourn to the future, where Cas was boozed up and fallen, and he hopes he's not in for more of the same. Though, with the way this Cas never took worried eyes off of him and how he doesn't reek of rock-bottom gloom, Dean doesn't think so.

Sam says to him, "We'll figure it out, Dean. It's not like we have a choice." Dean wonders if Sam's thinking of the Dean that's supposed to be here. That sad, sad, domestic son-of-a-bitch.

Speaking of.

"You wanna run that whole 'retired' thing by me one more time? What the hell, since when don't we hunt?" he asks. Well, less asks and more outright demands an explanation, and it better be a good one too. "We always hunt! We're hunters, Sam. It's what we do!"

Sam doesn't seem to share his outrage. Sam, actually, is practically preening. "Yeah, well. It's kinda hard to hunt when there's nothing there _to_ hunt."

That knocks all the wind right out of Dean's sails. "Come again?"

"You remember Kevin? The prophet?"

Dean does. Weird kid. Kind of nerdy and complained a whole hell of a lot. Still doesn't make any sense to Dean though. "Okay, so. What, he _advanced placement_ -ed the world into peace and hakuna matata, that's what you're telling me?"

"Not exactly. More like, we found a tablet."

"And?"

"And it closed the Gates of Hell."

Dean's heart actually stops and stutters at that, hammering weirdly in his chest for a couple of blown away beats. Closing the Gates of Hell. He didn't think anything like that was even possible. He doesn't know what to say. It feels too much like he's in some djinn fantasy world suddenly, with his brother here, with Cas, with the whole friggin' planet wiped mostly clean of monsters. This is the thing of wishes.

"Don't get me wrong," Sam goes on. He picks at that plaid table top where a few loose threads are fraying near the end. "It's not like it was easy, or like we didn't lose anyone." The way he says that, Dean wonders who it was, then, that was lost. He figures it must've been Kevin, because everyone else they know is here. Everyone Dean cares about that isn't already gone, anyway. "But, hey. It all worked out in the end." He looks at Dean with a smile. "Still ghost hunt."

There's an acceptance in the way Sam's staring at him right now that Dean can't get over; for as much as their life has always, _always_ thrown them for a loop, 'time-traveling straight out of Purgatory' shouldn't be an easy pill to swallow. Dean's freaked the fuck out, frankly, and not just because one of those magnets he saw on the fridge earlier is framing a picture of him and Cas cozied up together. As cozy as you can get, anyway, with a thrice-over angel of the Lord. This is not normal, okay. Being beamed into the future is not normal.

Someone clears their throat from the kitchen's entrance way. Cas.

Without knowing why, Dean is immediately on edge. Something about the way Cas is looking at him while raising his eyebrows, silently asserting his presence like he knows Sam and Dean have been sitting here having grown-up talk this whole time and he's tired of being stranded at the kiddy table. Or, you know, stashed away in a library.

"Cas," Sam says, startled and too loud. "Hey!" He blinks over at Dean, looking completely unsure about what their course of action is here, before schooling his expression into something that screams _I'm pretending really weird shit isn't going on right now, you cool with buying that_? "We were just--"

Cas is still staring at Dean, head tilted just so. "You were talking, yes. I know. I could hear."

Right. Awkward. It's not like Dean's got himself a super special secret here, and it's only Sam who can know, but. Again, there's a weirdness in his chest when he looks at this Cas. That damn photo on the fridge isn't helping. It's making him really, really aware of some things inside his head he's been pretty good so far at keeping a lid on, things that Purgatory kind of blew wide open for him.

Sam clears his throat. "Right. Well." He glances at Dean again, like he expects Dean to pick up where he's left off. Smooth.

Dean's about to ask Cas to go ahead and take a seat, but Cas makes that decision himself and does it first. He sits down casually across from them, some mix between the too-stiff Castiel of yore and the drugged out Cas of Christmas future. "I'd say it was nice to see you, Dean, but then, I don't know which Dean I'd be saying it to."

Cas' gaze hones in on his and locks him in a strong hold. Dean has to swallow past a sudden tightness in his throat, Purgatory heavy on his mind with no real reason for it to be. "Yeah, well. You know me. Why travel when you can time travel."

With Cas still staring question marks at Dean, Sam asks, "How'd you know? That it wasn't Dean, I mean. Or, the right Dean, I guess."

Because, right. It's not like Castiel could do his angel-thing and sense the really-real Dean within or anything.

Dean's half-expecting something like that to come out of Cas' mouth anyway, but instead his eyes drag down Dean's body before going right back up. "You're dirty." Ah. Okay. Dean is that. Dean's got Purgatory grime coated on him so thickly, he thinks it'll take more than a few showers before he's clean. "Besides," Cas adds, "the walls in this house aren't as thick as you'd like to think they are."

Again, oh. But, hey, at least it's all out there in the open then.

Sam's doing something that is almost like smiling, peacefully so, and Cas is staring holes into the side of his face still, and Dean feels like -- well, like he's been zapped into the freaking Twilight Zone, which, as it turns out, is pretty much his actual life right now.

"So," Sam says. He taps once at the table top, abandoning those tattered threads. "Research?"

 

&

 

"So how come you're not freaking out right about now?" Dean asks Sam over a pile of old books in the library. He's shed his jacket, but still has his boots on and knife right where he left it. He's not about to get comfortable here, because there's no way in hell he's planning on making this an extended visit, but the coat was starting to stink the place up. "'Cause I gotta tell you," he carries on, "in here?" That's a tap to the side of his head. "Whole friggin' mess of crazy."

Sam leans back in his chair, at the room's lone desk with his laptop open in front of him. From a nearby sofa, also surrounded by books, Cas watches. "I don't know. I am, I guess."

Dean snorts, eyes back on the pages in front of him. Little good it's even doing him. So far all they've turned up is squat. "Could've fooled me," he murmurs.

"What do you want me to say?" Sam fires back. "Our whole life, Dean, has been one unexplainable phenomenon after the other. Or, it was," he says, and he's frowning. "Until we closed the Gates. I guess I'm just..." When he trails off, Dean's attention snaps his way again. Sam shifts, avoiding eye contact, which means Dean fills in the blanks himself and does what comes naturally. He razzes him.

"Would you look at you. You're getting off on this. Aren't you?"

Sam silently communicates his annoyance at Dean by way of scowl. "Obviously I'm not."

"Oh, but you are." Flicking the book shut in front of him -- he doesn't even know why he's bothering with it, it's all demon lore, it's 100% useless right now -- Dean folds his arms over his chest and unleashes some big brother wisdom. "Gates of Hell all locked up. Nothing to hunt but ghosts, and, hell, most times that's a salt-and-burn that goes down easy. You're bored out of your mind here."

Sam huffs and starts tapping intently at his computer once more. "Yeah, like I really wish there was still supernatural evil in the world, Dean. Like I want people to die."

"Okay, maybe not. Not quite. But this?" He opens his arms to gesture around him, feeling like he's in la-la land. "The fixer-upper, the porch? The friggin' wafty curtains? Come on, man. You can't tell me you're okay with this. You're a warrior! You need the hunt."

Sam meets him head on this time, smirking and looking boastful. "See, that's where you're wrong."

Dean doesn't think so. "Oh, am I?"

Sam couldn't look more smug if he tried. He gets up from the desk by heaving upwards with his whole upper body. "This fixer-upper? The, uh, wafty curtains?" As he's walking around the chair Dean's seated at, Sam claps him behind the shoulder. "All yours, buddy."

While Sam heads out of the room, Dean's mind whirs like hell to try and catch up with that parting shot. When he looks up at Cas, instead of staring back, Cas is ducking his head like Sam is a goddamn comedian and he finds the whole thing funny too and --

"No," Dean says, realizing. It hits him like a truck. The curtains. That fridge with the -- with the _magnets_. "No," he says again more forcefully.

Cas stacks a book atop a small tower in front of him. "Your humble abode," he confirms grandly, being a smartass, but it's like that's an actual title, like maybe they refer to it that way all the time, cementing Dean's horror. "Well, _ours_ , would I guess be the more accurate term," Cas clarifies, and is that white noise Dean is hearing? He might be losing it.

He can barely even get the next few words out. And they are few. "We, uh. You and me, then. Ha."

This is not a djinn wish world. Dean is ruling that out. Put a mark through that one. Because there's no way in hell he'd _ever_ wind up being bunk-buddies with Cas in some 3-bedroom/2-bath model home on the outskirts of an apple pie town. No.

Cas' gaze is steady on his, and Dean feels it like the sharp edge of a weapon at his throat. "I'm afraid so," he affirms. Dean nods vacantly, and the laugh that rings out of him is small and hollow.

"Which of course in no way implies we're romantically bound in any way," Cas says then, with an unassuming look at Dean who, in fact, did take that to mean they were romantically bound, so thank god. Thank the non-actual god, for real.

His laugh is much more loose this time. Same amount of crazy in it though. "Good. We're not. I mean, _obviously_ we're not. Obviously." He sobers quick. "We're not, are we?" Just to make that crystal clear.

Genuinely curious, Cas only wonders, "Why would we?"

Okay, fair answer. They wouldn't. Dean doesn't even know why he thought it in the first place, except, again, the picture from the fridge enters his mind. He wouldn't say they looked particularly cuddly in it, and as far as he remembers, neither him nor Cas were even smiling, but still. It's not like Dean's the type who captures photographic memories with someone, then hangs it up for all to see beneath freaking pink flamingo magnets. He didn't even fall that far with Lisa, and Lisa was _Lisa_.

"Then again," Cas says, sorting through a smaller pile of books, "why wouldn't we?"

Dean's head snaps up, looking for Cas', but Cas carries on like everything's normal, like that wasn't just a bomb dropped on Dean's brain. Sam comes strolling back into the room with a glass of water, which he offers to Dean, and Dean takes it, still staring, still grappling.

For a few minutes reality carries on without Dean's involvement, and it's only when Sam goes, " _Dean_ ," at him in a raised voice, the kind that implies it's not the first time he's been called, does Dean jolt back to. "You find anything?"

Dean doesn't even have a book open.

"Not a thing," he says, sounding strained.

 

&

 

"No," Dean says, adamant. That's to Sam, who's holding a towel out to Dean with this look on his face like Dean's a rescue mutt newly brought home from the pound and now that they've got the obligatory familiarizing time over, it's time for him to settle in.

"You need to clean up. No offense, but. You kinda reek, man."

Dean's in a mindfuck from hell. Who cares how much he reeks. When he doesn't get up or move or otherwise acknowledge Sam's attempts to herd him towards a bathroom, Sam lets out a long-suffering sigh.

"Look, we'll keep searching," he says, using his elbow to gesture Castiel's way, who is still on the sofa leafing through books, just the same as Dean who is chair-bound and desperate for anything helpful. "I mean it. Me and Cas both." Dean just grunts, which gets another sigh out of Sam. "You've been at this for hours. Seriously, how much longer are you gonna run yourself dry?"

That finally gets Dean to look up. "As long as it takes." Which is basically a _duh_ that doubles as a _you hit your head and become stupid or something_?

Sam carefully sits himself down at the edge of the coffee table in front of Dean, avoiding the still full glass of water he'd brought in earlier. He fidgets with the towel on his lap. "I get it. I do." Dean gives him a hard look that implies he very much doubts that. "What," Sam defends right away, "you think I don't want my brother back?"

Dean chuffs out a mean-sounding breath through his nose and goes back to the books. "Way you tell it, you think you'd be glad to be rid of that guy." A guy who, so Dean's come to learn, is home maybe three months of the year total; the rest of the time he's gone getting his jollies off salting ghosts, endlessly road-tripping from one haunt to the next. As always. There's something that tugs mean and messy at Dean's chest when he thinks about that, about what it means; how the hunt won't ever let him go, or how Dean himself can't just leave it behind, even when the universe hands him guaranteed happiness on a silver platter. He must be some ten kinds of screwed up inside, if he can't even get his shit together here.

Sam stands back up in a fit. "I hate to break it to you, Dean, but that same guy? He's you."

Cas says, " _Sam_ ," like he's trying to warn off an inevitable blow up, a familiar blow up, but Sam only glances briefly in that direction before bringing his annoyance back around to Dean.

"You're just as messed up," he tells him, "like the whole world revolves around you, the only difference is you don't know it yet."

"Hey," Cas tries again, only more chastising. "Sam."

"What, he can't hear about what a jerk he is? How he has these insane double-standards that everyone has to live up to but him? Saint Dean, right?"

Dean gets up as well, book calmly set aside. They're already short of space between them, and it becomes even less with Sam staring him down like some ticked off moose. "Awesome." He gestures for Sam to bring it on. "Get it out your system."

"Screw you," Sam say back, making Cas join them on his feet.

"You realize, both of you, how pointless this is, right?"

Sam shakes his head and huffs out, like a brat. "It's always the same with him. It is, Cas, and you know it. You _know_ it. He was like this when he came back the first time--"

"Friggin' newsflash, this _is_ the first time!" Dean cuts him off. "I don't know what stick crawled up your ass, but, man, talk about ugly. Sam I know? He's not a bitch like you."

Sam's eyes flare at that. He steps in close, crowding Dean with his height. "Yeah? How would you even know? You never try to talk to people--"

"Oh, boo-hoo, why don't you go cry about it in your journal." He takes his own step, only it's to the side to put some room between them. "Seriously, this is the future I'm supposed to be okay with? No wonder that other me's gone all the time."

It's a low blow, and it shows, for Sam and Cas both. Sam shoves the towel into Dean's hands and says, "I'm going," at Cas before high tailing it out of there, storming off. It's only a few seconds later that the sound of a slammed door rings throughout the house, which makes Cas sigh all old and weary-like.

"You mind explaining what the _hell_ that was about?" Dean says, not asking nice about it either.

"You... well, our-you," Cas blows out, like this is an old song-and-dance routine he's seen one too many times, "is a bit... reckless, I suppose, when it comes to other people's emotions."

Awesome. So once again Dean's whisked into a world where he's a grade A asshole. Nothing new there.

And Dean can't help noticing that Cas isn't excluding himself in that. He's bothered by it, but not enough to pick at it and wonder what the issue there is. Besides, Dean's pretty sure Sam left, not just flounced like a princess into a different room. The idea sours Dean's stomach more than it should, and Cas notices.

"He'll be back," he says, watching Dean way too closely for his liking.

Dean fingers the towel in his hand, gripping it close. "Yeah."

"With pie, I'm sure. There is always apology pie."

Dean forces something like a smile. "Guess he's not all bad-seed, then."

"No," Cas agrees. "Besides, then you'll meet Amelia--"

"Who now?"

"Sam's 'other-half,'" Cas says, with some conspiratorial air quotes, like maybe that's an in-house joke, but, of course, it means nothing to Dean. Except _other-half_ , say what? "The, ah, ball-and-chain, as you insist on calling her. Behind Sam's back, of course."

Dean's mind literally broke about three seconds back. He practically stutters, exactly zero of his thoughts managing to make it from his brain to his mouth correctly. "Hold up, Sam's _married_? Sam. Tall guy. That same whiny bastard that just left. Him?" This might be what a stroke feels like. "Talk about your bizarro world. How? _When_?"

Cas shrugs some, like it's of no real relevance to him. It's a weird thing to see on him. It might be because he's not wearing the coat, so the whole gesture happens much more noticeably, or maybe it's just that it's so _human_. "Two, three years ago? That would be a guess. Since I, uh, hung up my wings for good, time has the habit of seeming much more fluid. It all just--" He makes a _vpppt_ noise and signals a straight line, like it's one long, never-ending road for him.

Which only makes Dean's head feel like it's been kicked in all over again. It doesn't make sense, but he can't help but feel partially responsible for something like that. "When?" he asks more softly. Might as well get that conversation done and over with.

He watches Cas carefully. Cas' eyes slant downwards, and his shoulders fall, and he looks, suddenly, very, very tired. Or old. It makes Dean blurt out a new question. "Why?"

Cas holds Dean's gaze for a long couple of beats, hard as that even is for Dean, he of the longstanding ' _loser_ ' title when it comes to emotional chicken. Then he's sighing out, slumping back onto the sofa. He sits hunched over, his forearms braced against his thighs, back all bent. With his eyes trained ahead, stare lost somewhere in the general vicinity of Dean's boots, he replies on a long, heavy breath, weary once more. "I made a choice. _The_ choice."

"To, what? Join the mud-monkies?" Dean hesitantly drops down beside him, still staring, though now he's got a profile view. This close, he can see Cas is sporting a five o'clock shadow. It's nothing like it was down in Purgatory, but it's still more sloppy than anything he ever wore as an angel. "Why would you do that, Cas?"

"I could fall, and live as man, or I could remain as I was, bound to Heaven once more."

"And you fell." Not that he was expecting one, but he doesn't get an answer. "Cas..."

"The tablet Sam told you about," Cas says, finally angling a look Dean's way. "There wasn't only one, there were two, and they didn't just lock the Gates of Hell, Dean. They locked--"

"Everything. Heaven," Dean realizes. But still. Why would Cas...

"So, I had to ask myself, what meant more. What was worth losing, possibly forever. Heaven or..." The rest goes unspoken, but Dean can feel it anyway in the way Cas is staring at him. Heaven or him. Heaven or Sam. Or free will, or the frickin' bees. That's a hell of a weight to put on Dean's shoulders, and even though he never asked Cas to make that decision, would never, he can tell that it was asked anyway. Not in words, but Dean can see it now. Can imagine all too easily silently pleading with Cas not to go, willing him to stay, but pushing him away all the same.

Dean shakes his head. "Why would you--"

" _Dean_."

So, okay. Dean knows why. It's the same reason Cas rebelled in the first place, why he took on Sam's head full of crazy, why he went after Dick Roman with him. That too-big thing between them they don't ever talk about.

"Anyway," Cas says. He exhales it out in a way that's meant to clear the tension in the room. "Sam was right. You should get clean. That," he says -- he's eying the crust of dirt Dean's still wearing, and Dean only just now feels it, "can't be comfortable. _Wasn't_ comfortable," he amends that to. "I remember."

He wants to ask Cas about that. Did they get out of Purgatory together, then? How? Why's he still hanging around here, why are they long-distance _whatever_ s, why everything?

Dean breaks away from Cas' stare to look down at the towel, which he's still got clutched in his hands. It's blue with a sea shell border. Of course it is.

"Yeah." He clears his throat and stands. "Uh. Which way?"

Cas points the way -- upstairs, two doors down on the right attached to an ensuite bedroom with a queen-sized bed, its covers rucked down messily -- and leaves him to it.

Dean stands there in the bathroom for several minutes before making an attempt to move or undress, just staring at the collection of toiletries on the counter, at the two toothbrushes, at himself in the mirror.

 

&

 

When Dean comes down, clean and wearing clothes that fit like new and feel damn good, because of course they would, they're future-his, he is lured into the kitchen by way of smell.

Cas is pulling something out of the oven.

"You cook?" Dean blurts. It's only weird because he's never seen Cas eat anything other than those hamburgers the one time, all several hundred of them. He always figured Cas overdid it in that department, which is why he usually deflected Dean's attempts to get him to wine-and-dine on the road with him and Sam.

"Only as required. As far as being satisfactory..."

The baking sheet that comes out of the oven smells amazing, though. Maybe that's because Dean hasn't eaten in -- uh, whatever two days plus _one long ass visit to Purgatory_ would be.

"Sit," Cas tells him. "Eat." He starts pulling out a pair of plates, some silverware. It's all very creepy.

When Dean still hasn't moved out of the doorway, Cas says, "Dean. Sit." So Dean does, and it's with the feeling that this isn't as out-of-the-norm for Cas as it is for him. Like maybe he's sat here and had a hundred other meals with Dean at this same table, with these same plates.

"So," he says, just to say something. "You some kinda Suzie Homemaker now?" All that's missing is the apron. Which is not a visual Dean needed in his head, thank you.

Cas does something close to smiling while he sets the food on the table. Not like he's amused at Dean for saying so, but like he finds the idea of it funny. Or nuts. "If it helps you to see it that way. I don't know who Suzie is, though, or why that would need to be my name."

Dean stares. And stares.

"Joke, Dean," Cas says, heading back to the stove top. So of course Dean just stares some more, because that's even _more_ strange. Seriously, bizarro world here. "I'm home more than Sam finds acceptable, but I work."

"You. Working," Dean says, stating it pointedly lest his disbelief doesn't come fully across.

"There's a shop close by, in town. You might say it caters towards a more furry client." When Dean continues on blinking cluelessly, Cas takes pity on him and stops yanking his chain. "Dogs. Cats. Other creatures as well, of course, like birds, snakes--"

"You work at a _pet store_?" Dean gushes with something like horror. How the hell does Cas, bad ass soldier of God, work at a _pet store_?

"It has its peace," Cas defends.

"Sure, no," Dean is quick to agree. "Yapping dogs. Frisky cats. Lots of peace there."

Cas finally sits down beside Dean, which makes Dean feel awkward for all of three seconds while Cas fusses around and gets comfortable, arranging a paper towel napkin in front of him. "You always say that. Well, the other-you."

"Other-me sounds like the only sane crayon in the Crayola box."

Cas laughs. It's quiet, but it's an actual, honest-to-god laugh. It's so extraordinary in its newness, Dean doesn't think to _not_ stare. If Cas is bothered by all the ogling, he doesn't show it, instead heaping mounds of food on his plate. Yellow rice and green beans, Dean watches, to go with the chicken from the oven. The kind of home-cooked meal Sam would wet himself over, the same kind that Dean would skip entirely in favor of gas station goodies.

Purgatory must've screwed him up, because he's hungry, he's so hungry the green beans might even taste good, but it's the kind of hunger that comes with an ache. An actual, honest-to-god ache. He doesn't know what to do with a real meal in front of him anymore.

Cas doesn't say anything about it. Cas only takes small bites, and watches Dean, and doesn't speak.

 

&

 

Turns out, Dean doesn't sleep either. Or can't.

At some point during the night, in the early hours that following morning, Cas had started dragging a tired hand over his eyes. It wasn't long after that that Dean broke their mutual researching silence to ask Cas a question, only to look up and see that Cas had his head tipped back against the couch, completely out of it.

Dean had caught himself staring, then told himself it was because a sleeping Cas never led to anything good, not in his experience. It had nothing to do with how defenseless Cas seemed sprawled like that, lifeless and lit up only by the faint glow of a desk lamp. Like he hadn't at one time been able to fuck with the laws of the universe, like he hadn't hurled Dean through space and time before, like he wasn't previously some cape-and-tights away from being a fully-equipped, souped up superhero. And now he was human, and yeah, Dean had gotten a glimpse or two of that before, but this seemed like the real deal in front of him. Not a half-powered being that could still squash him like a bug if he wanted to, and not some hippie, either, who'd been beaten up by life, but who Castiel might actually be beneath all that learned behavior, after all the angel was stripped away. Or forced away.

By the time Castiel rouses back to, the lamp's doing nothing but wasting electricity. Bands of sunlight pour in through heavy window curtains that've been drawn back at the bottom.

"Rise and shine, sleepin' beauty," he says, rough-sounding from so many hours of non-use but still obnoxious and chirpy.

Cas only stares at him, blinking through the brightness and early morning brain-sludge. Dean grins, totally flaunting how alert and awake he already is, with an additional something in there that taunts _nice bedhead_ , which only makes Cas glower while he's scoots to the edge of the couch. Someone's not a morning person.

Cas starts stretching out a crick in his neck, then bends an arm back behind his head, loosening up a sore muscle. "Any luck?" He asks it while working on the other arm, and if Dean sounded gruff before, double that for Cas. It's like he'd been garbling rocks all night.

Dean has to make himself look away, feeling like a creeper. Probably he shouldn't find himself so fixated on the flash of skin where Castiel's shirt is riding up, except he is? A little? It's new, though, and it flags both his attention and curiosity in equal parts, like he's not sure if he wants to tell Cas to cover up for christs' sake, or take a closer look.

Without waiting for an answer -- and obviously Dean doesn't have one, because if he did, he wouldn't be _here_ , would he? -- Cas gets up, stopping only to swipe the glass of water still left untouched on the table before he goes.

 

&

 

Dean is staring out the kitchen window, out at the front lawn, nursing a bottle of beer he found stashed in the back of the fridge and wondering just how deep into survival mode he should be going when this trendy-looking car uglies up the driveway. It's one of those hybrids, the kind that runs on french fry oil and pretension. Which of course means it's Sam who unfolds out of the driver's seat, making something spike inside of Dean, like relief.

Then he notices that Sam's got himself a passenger. It's a girl, so he figures it must be Amelia. The wife. That makes something else flare up, nothing close to relief, and he doesn't care for it one bit. He's a grown ass man. He shouldn't be so codependent on his brother; even worse, he shouldn't be so pissy just because his brother is apparently fine and thriving and happy not being dependent on him.

Dean backs away from the window as those two get closer. He's taking a sip of his beer when the front door opens and Sam comes pushing through, sans knock. Their eyes meet, something uncomfortable passing between them. That fight they had, likely.

The woman -- Amelia -- drags them out of it, having to physically manhandle Sam out of the way where he's blocking the door. "Linger much?" she snarks, and Dean's got to hand it to his brother. This chick wouldn't be Dean's normal type -- too cute in that Natalie Portman, girl-next-door, flannel-wearing kind of way -- but she's got some bite to her, plus she was able to move Sam like he weighed next to nothing when Dean knows for a fact Sam is heavy like he's made up of nothing but dead weight.

"Right," Sam blurts, spinning Amelia's way. "Sorry, babe," he tells her, but his gaze plants itself right back on Dean with the kind of please-don't-wreck-this-for-me silent insistence Dean hasn't seen on him since way back in the day. Back when they were kids and, man, talk about your dredged up memories.

Dean ignores the look and smiles real big at Amelia, who is dropping full sacks of groceries onto the table. "Hiya, Amelia," he says, doing so only to rattle Sam. And if he hears the word _babe_ rattling around in his head, making this some fucked up retaliation for that, it's his own damn problem.

For all Dean knows, though, future-him's as uneasy with Sam being married as he currently is, but like hell that's going to stop him from making Sam squirm. And Sam does squirm, especially when Amelia lets out a tuckered-sounding sigh from handling the groceries before casting this genuinely pleased look Dean's way.

"Hey, I heard you were back," she tells him, swiping her hands down her pants. She starts reaching into the bags and pulling stuff out. "Actually, no. Frankenmoose here came home last night in one helluva prickly mood, so I kinda put two and two together."

Yeah, no. This chick definitely has bite.

Sam stomps forward, still staring sternly at Dean. "We need to talk," he tells him in this not-in-front-of-the-wife voice. So his brother's got himself whipped. Dean's about to crack a delighted joke at Sam's expense, but Sam starts bodily ushering him elsewhere.

"Hey, hey," Dean barks, free hand out in the air, his beer in serious danger of being wasted by way of spill. "I heard you the first time, _Frankenmoose_."

That gets a glower. Dean feels pretty damn pleased with himself, all things considered. At least until Sam shepherds him into the library and closes the door after them. He turns on Dean with a scowl. If Dean was to squint just so, he bets he'd see steam coming out of Sam's flaring nostrils.

"Let me guess," he starts right out with. "Cas told you, right?"

"Seeing how I missed the ring the first time," Dean says, and that? So damn pissy. "Yeah. Guess he had to." Purely a means for self-preservation, he deflects what he fears is going to be one of those _very serious talks_ with some good ol' sarcasm. "You wake up on your period or something?"

"Unbelievable," Sam breathes out, hands on his hips.

"Aww," Dean rolls with it, mocking. "You flatterer, you."

"Cut the crap, Dean," Sam says. He looks like he's trying to do mental meditation. Like he's counting to ten and channeling his inner-Yanni. "Look. Last night was, whatever. We fight all the time, it's nothing new." That unexpectedly drops Dean's mood. They don't fight all the time. They fight a lot, fine, but jesus christ, they're brothers. Brothers fight. "But I'm asking you for a favor here, and I need you to--" Sam steps in closer, dropping the defensive stance. He seems genuinely worried that Dean's going to continue being an asshole and is pleading now. "I need you to just go with me on something, okay?"

It takes everything in him to not push Sam away. Dean's got his guard down, and usually when that happens, he gets screwed over. Every time. But he tames the urge to fight back and only grunts out, "Yeah, what?"

"Amelia? She doesn't know. About any of this."

Dean tries to follow his way around that bend. "About..."

"Everything. Demons, ghosts. Angels. She doesn't know we used to be hunters."

"Still are," Dean corrects automatically, mind on autopilot.

"Fine, whatever. I just -- when I met her, Dean, you and Cas were in Purgatory, you guys were both gone and she was this totally normal girl who let me into her totally normal life and I didn't want to mess that up."

All Dean can say is, "Wow," finding words genuinely hard to come by. It's not like either of them ever bragged about their extracurricular activities to any of the women they dated over the years, but Sam _married_ this chick. How the hell did he get by without explaining their entire freaking life to her? "Okay," he agrees finally. What else is there to do?

Sam lets out this grateful breath. "Really?"

"I'm not gonna show her your skeletons, man," Dean says, a little offended that Sam's as appreciative as he is. He may be a dick sometimes, but come on. He's got his limits.

"Yeah, no, I know, I just. I don't know. I guess I expected more of a fight."

"Dude, what do I care? It's your life. It's not like I'm going to be stuck here forever."

Sam's look turns almost pitying at that. Like Dean's some messed up kid who still believes in Santa Clause. "Of course," he says. "Still though. It means a lot. Really."

"Alright, alright," Dean groans, closing his eyes against the onslaught of touchy-feely emotions trying to smother him right now. "Put it in a poem or something, geez."

Sam rolls his eyes, but he huffs out a small laugh. "So," he says, after a beat. It's a beat that changes the tension in the room from tolerable to uncomfortable almost immediately. Sam's got his _can we talk about our feelings now_ eyes on too. "About last night."

Dean swipes out a hand to cut off that line of conversational torture, like it's all no big deal and also can Sam please shut up already. "Already forgotten. Or emotionally repressed. Whichever."

"You know that's not healthy. Right?" But Sam's pretty much smiling again, affectionate this time.

"Please, I'm like the frickin' poster boy for mental health."

Sam lets out another small laugh. He holds Dean's stare longer this time, until it turns tender and Dean has to chug at his beer to keep from getting suckered in by it. "Thanks, Dean," he says, like he means it.

Dean throws his arm around Sam's shoulder and guides them back out of the room, right out of this no-good scene straight from a chick-flick. "Yeah, let's talk about that car I saw you drive up in. You mind explaining that to me?"

 

&

 

Technically Dean knows who Amelia is. The Dean who is of this timeline, anyway, which means the Dean who very much does _not_ know who Amelia is has to curb his staring. Because he is doing that, a lot. The staring. It's just, Sam and Amelia are sitting beside one another at the kitchen table, folded together like two pieces of a puzzle. They finish each others sentences. They share smiles. They have jokes.

Even Cas, who's come down and joined them, seems in on their shared history, making Dean feel like some sort of eavesdropping creeper &/or weirdo loner.

"So, point is," Amelia's saying, eyes flaring with the dramatic storytelling of it and all Dean can think is _who the hell are you people_ , "we've got a weirdly temperamental AC unit, but mostly I blame that on this failure right here," she says, swatting at Sam with fondness, indicating he is the failure with a capital F.

Sam goes, "Ouch," in a tone that's got absolutely zero validity to it, though he still drops it like he's been stung.

"Seriously, and he calls himself a repairman."

Dean stares at Sam, throat tight with unwanted feelings. "Does he now?" That's news to him.

The look Sam flicks his way is a helpless one, like they're toeing too close towards that line that's been drawn, the one where Amelia's not supposed to catch even a whiff of the hunting lifestyle.

Cas cuts in like a pro. "An inefficient one." When Amelia laughs at his expense, Sam smiles goofily at her. Frickin' lovebirds. Cas leans Dean's way and clarifies for his benefit. "This would explain the downstairs bathroom. Sam broke the sink."

Sam sputters defensively. "I didn't! I--"

"Left it in a state of disrepair. Exactly."

Sam stares back long and bitchy, but there is so much friendship and warmth going on there that Dean finds it a little hard to stand. It's almost like he's jealous of it, only he doesn't know who to be jealous of, which is a feeling he could really do without.

Dean gets up quick, his chair making noise as it drags across the linoleum. "All this talk about bathrooms, heh. I, uh, need to go see a man about a horse. Be right back."

 

&

 

Cas finds him in the library.

"Dean," he announces solemnly, coming up on him from behind. It scares the living shit out of Dean, quiet as the intrusion is.

"Don't do that!" he snaps once he's sure his heart isn't skipping its way up his throat anytime soon. Cas only tilts his head at him, all big, round, puzzled eyes. Eventually that softens into sympathy, which Dean likes a lot less.

"How are you managing?" Cas asks.

On any other person, it'd look like Dean's been sulking the past ten minutes. Screw that, though, Dean's just been reflecting. In a manly, solitary way. That he feels like shit is only a coincidence.

There's an ache inside of him, one that hurts enough that he almost wants to talk about it just to shut the damn thing up. Almost.

Dean rakes a hand down his eyes and tells Cas, "Awesome. I am one-hundred percent awesome here. You?"

Cas' eyes go sharp in consternation, like he knows Dean's full of crap and there's no need to lash out either, but he doesn't call him out on it. Dean appreciates that enough to drop his anger, at least somewhat. Aside from the lengthy self-reflection, Dean's been standing here thumbing through one of Bobby's old books. It's worn and torn with wear, smudges throughout the whole thing like no one bothered to ever care for it properly. Figures. The old bastard.

"Sam and Amelia," Cas starts. "They can be... overwhelming at times."

Dean snorts. In Cas-speak, that's practically like calling them narcissistic assholes. It's a dumb, childish reaction, but Dean feels thrilled by Cas' words for some reason, as if they're buddying up and bonding over the lameness of Sam-and-Amelia together. Like next comes the no-take-backs blood swap and the sworn NO GIRLS ALLOWED oath.

"Man," he says instead, pushing it out under his breath, "is it just me, or are we in some kinda Anne Hathaway movie right now?" At the look Cas gives him -- one that basically says _I have no idea what you're referring to because I don't watch those kind of movies, but, hey, let's talk about your freaky fetish_ \-- Dean gets defensive and thus insistent. "Shut up. Whatever, Anne Hathaway's hot, okay." Cas has started doing that small, smirky thing he does, so Dean snaps again, "Shut up."

"At least there is no Glenn Close," Cas says, and he does it by leaning in and phrasing it extra carefully, just so Dean catches the reference. Like he'd ever miss it.

Dean's eyes find Cas' right away, and Cas is staring back already like he's proud of himself for that one, like he thinks he's done something clever here, but all Dean feels is this rush of nostalgia and gratitude and then something way bigger. A reminder, maybe, that they've been at this for a long time now, with so much shared between them.

"Yeah," he eventually gets out on a laugh, though it's shaky. Cas notices and quirks his head at Dean once more, a new kind of study. For a brief moment, Dean's actually glad that Castiel doesn't have any angel mojo in him anymore and can't read his thoughts. "So." He's eager for a change in conversation, and winds up clinging to the first thing that pops in his head. "They send you to collect me or something?"

Eventually Cas drops the creepy soul-scan and goes, "I volunteered to assist you with the man on the horse." That, Dean realizes after a long, stretched out beat, is more humor. Alright. Cas looks like he's biting back a smile, and Dean finds himself doing the same.

He sways so he's bumping elbows with Cas, on purpose. "What do you say we assist ourselves a little bit longer?"

Cas lets the smile go. "Of course."

 

&

 

Dean learns, eventually, that he's landed smack in the middle of Kermit, Texas, and so far his only knowledge of the place is that it's flat the whole way across, dry as hell, and that it is the actual worst.

He doesn't ask how they wound up in the toilet bowl that is Texas. Amelia's slight twang gives him a clear enough idea.

Tumbleweeds don't actually blow past, but the yard outside is dusty in some parts and covered in yellowing grass from too much sun in others. There's a wooden fence that separates them from the neighbors. Except for the fact that the house is painted a god awful orange color, and only in the front, everything about it, from the mailbox to the patch of weeds, is normal. Boring.

Inside isn't much better, though the place seems comfortably lived in. This is Dean's conclusion after more than one sleepover, anyway.

There isn't a lot of furniture -- bachelor chic or they're dirt poor, who knows -- but there are stacks of things all over the place. Records and books and magazines, they're everywhere, like they quit the hunting business for hoarding. They're piled up in the corners of rooms, at the edges of end tables. Wedged in between shelves. He recognizes enough covers to know it's his mess as much as Cas', but that's only adds to the nagging sense of not-quite-normal.

Sam must've broke the downstairs bathroom for real; as far as Dean can tell, it's been turned into a storage closet, which at least explains why the upstairs bathroom is a shared bathroom.

It's weird to watch Cas move around the place like he's never been comfier. Weird, too, to share a roof with the guy and not have him poofing off for angel business every half hour.

After three days, Dean's reluctantly started to accept that this might be his new slot in life.

The trip to 2014 was an overnight stay as well, but he'd been fine with that because he knew what he was playing against. Zachariah had him by the puppet strings, and because Dean was Michael's vessel, things were obviously always going to be temporary.

Dean doesn't have that same reassurance this time, so he's left feeling like a fish out of water. Like he's got one foot in both worlds, and he can't tell if this is really it, if he oughta unpack his suitcase and get cozy, or if he should be fighting tooth and nail to get back home.

Freaking time travel.

 

&

 

Dean opens the porch door, looking for Sam, and finds him right where he expects him. He's sitting on the steps, hunched over on the phone.

"--so, just, call me back," he hears him say, and then Sam sighs loudly, still holding the cell phone to his ear another few seconds before he ends the call.

"No word from future-douche," Dean says knowingly, letting the back door swing shut behind him.

Sam doesn't startle, but he does twist around quick, like he just got caught in the act of something way more lewd than making a concerned call to his brother.

Sam looks pretty upset about the whole thing, but he pulls on his crap's-not-eating-at-me face. "No."

"Huh." Slow, Dean sits down beside him. "I take it that's not exactly new though."

Sam's stare stays on him a while longer, like his brain's a computer and it's trying to process Dean -- and, hey, good luck with that -- before he gives up and looks out at the backyard. "No," he says again, with this ironic smile there in his voice. Which, ouch. Then he shifts and looks at Dean again, suddenly determined. "You know, it's so weird. Having all these memories with you, you not remembering."

They don't seem like good memories, though. As far as he can figure, future-Dean didn't take to the idea of Sam-and-Amelia so well and has spent the past however many years being a giant dick about it. He can't ever imagine being that big of an asshole, though, especially because if there's anything Dean is willing to sacrifice it's his own happiness so that Sam can live the dream -- wife, kids, yard full of gassy pets -- but when he does think of living a life separate from Sam, of not being that person Sam trusts and knows best, it makes his heart do fucked up things, like pitch a damn fit and spaz around like a kid in need of more attention.

So maybe he gets it.

"What," Dean says, aiming for teasing and landing somewhere more towards forced, "like we finally got that trip to the Grand Canyon? Sam," he says, lighter now, clapping a hand on his brother's shoulder, "if you wanna fess up over how you bawled like a baby, I'm here for you--"

Sam shakes him off with a bratty roll of his shoulders. Dean does a fairly good job of pretending that doesn't sting like hell.

"Ha," Sam says, smiling, but it's small and terse and gone the next second. "I'm serious, though. Like, I look at you and. And I want to be _mad_ because, Dean, you make me mad all the time now, and how messed up is that?"

Dean tries for a laugh. It's a sad-sounding thing. "I don't know, seems pretty normal to me."

Sam's always been able to tell when Dean's one more heartfelt confession/angsty admission away from having his fight-or-flight instincts kicking into gear. Dean's pathetically glad that still hasn't changed. "I guess," Sam says, conceding.

Dean came out here for a reason. Brother bonding time. He's getting pretty sick of Sam looking at him like he's a monster and a disappointment all wrapped up in one.

"So, Kermit," Dean quips when the silence stretches on.

Sam huffs out a sound that could be laughter. "I know."

"Texas," Dean presses.

"Trust me. I know."

"Just saying."

 

&

 

It's late that same night. Two, three in the morning, Dean figures.

There's a close, creaky noise, one he's now able to identify as stair number twelve. It makes this groaning sound whenever anyone puts pressure on it, the wood buckling under any kind of weight. It'll probably splinter on them one of these days, and he'd say something about that, except, hell. Not his problem. Let future-Dean worry about home repair.

A couple seconds later Cas flicks on the light switch that only turns on the desk lamp, not the overhead light, but it's still bright and still an intrusion. The knowing look Cas gives Dean isn't any better.

Whatever, so Dean's at the foot of the couch, sitting on the floor in the library. So he's wound up and tense, something wild thrumming through his blood. So maybe Purgatory made it this way, where he got too used to needing as little sleep as possible because you never knew what monster was at your back or just around the corner.

Dean's waiting for the _how much therapy do you require_ portion of this encounter, except it never comes. Instead Cas steps over Dean's outstretched legs and sits down beside him, mirroring him exactly. And way too closely; their elbows knock together, but it's Cas, the guy can't help it. He wouldn't know a personal bubble if the thing turned literal on him.

Dean goes straight for overly cheerful and everything's-fine-here. "Can't sleep either, huh?" Big grin, too.

"No."

Trust Cas to be a wet blanket. Dean's the one who's been up all night staring in the dark, his overactive mind keeping him wide awake, but Cas is still the one to kill the mood.

In a way, though, this is familiar. This is Purgatory. Cas has Dean's back, Dean has his. And Benny. Benny...

Dean scratches at his arm almost thoughtlessly, not even realizing he's doing it until Cas stares.

"Right," Dean says awkwardly. Because now he's coming off like some drug addict itching for a fix. He covers with a rocky laugh. "Hell, I can't even tell if he's still in there or not." The phrasing is embarrassing enough as it is, he's not going to clarify. But Cas already knows.

"Once we were on familiar soil," he rumbles out, "and safe, the vampire--"

Dean cutting him off is a knee-jerk reaction. "Don't wanna know," he grunts. Cas quirks his head and narrows his eyes, as if Dean being a drama queen is a new development, but Dean's pretty decided on the matter. "Seriously, let me have this one thing. Okay? 'Cause I know my brother hates me, or does a damn good impression of it. Doctor Sexy ain't on TV, which clearly means the world's gone to hell. You're... you know, all..." Dean swirls his hand in the air in front of him to illustrate his meaning, but it's more like he's taking the easy way out because he still hasn't figured out the answer to that one. "Hell, for all I know, Benny bit it the second we made it topside. I don't want to know."

Cas lets him have that, though he does say, "Don't be an infant, your brother couldn't possibly hate you."

Dean bites out a hard, mean breath. "Okay."

Silence settles around them after that, for a while too, comfortable and easy, but then Cas breaks it.

"After," he says, without needing to explain what _after_ they're talking about here, Purgatory's still lingering there between them, "there was a time I felt almost completely alone, more than I can ever recall being. Even when I went against Heaven, rebelled, I had -- _purpose_. Slaying thousands of your brethren, however, with no home to return to, and no faith in God's design?" That's said with a dry, empty grin, one Dean doesn't like seeing on him. It's almost bitter, but it doesn't quite get that far with Cas staying as detached as possible. "It can be desolate. But then we'd also have to talk about punishment if we're talking about guilt. I deserved it."

Dean is hit with dual emotions: one part overwhelming urge to flee, versus one part dead enough inside to let this conversation slick off him like water on oil.

Something else wins out.

"You know, I could've left you down there." Cas tilts his head and looks interested in where this conversation is going. His eyes lock on Dean, and Dean has to look away, has to find somewhere less distracting to stare. He winds up spilling his guts to the clock on the wall. "You bailed on me the minute we got there, and Benny. Benny had a way out. If I had thought for even a second, Cas, _a second_ , that you deserved that place? I'd've split. Like that."

"Dean..."

"I saw it, okay? At the portal. Hell, maybe you don't even remember by now, but you had this look, like you were gonna stay."

"That was the plan," Cas agrees, and his own gaze drops elsewhere when Dean's snaps his way.

"Why?" he asks, voice cracking. Cas crinkles his forehead like he's trying to recall his reasoning, like he's gotten used to not thinking about that. "I had to spell it out more clearly than _I need you_?" Dean demands, and the only way he can even get that out, can admit that much, is by dredging up a shitload of anger.

Cas swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing. "It wasn't about you."

"Like hell. You wouldn't have been down there in the first place if it wasn't for me."

"And the Leviathan wouldn't have--"

Dean plants his palms on the carpet and pushes off the floor, scooting instead to the couch. He can feel his temper flaring, but there's other stuff rolling around in it too.

He falls back against the cushions, heavy and exhausted and done. Just, completely finished. "I am so damn tired of having this conversation," he tells him, hoarse. Harsh. "You're sorry, and I'm sorry. Everyone's sorry. And the blame," he says, laughing that out, though it's humorless. "God, I love that."

Sitting as they are now, Dean's knee is shoved up against Cas' shoulder. There's a warmth there, and because of it, a comfort, and Dean has no idea to do with that. It's always been this way with Cas, though, from the very beginning, but at least he used to be able to justify this _whatever_ between them. The Righteous man and the angel. You can't escape the Hallmark of that.

But since the Crowley deal. Since the Purgatory souls and Sam's mind-wall and, hell, everything in between, it's been harder and harder to figure out _why_. Cas has given Dean every reason to drop him from his life, and except for the fact that the universe seems bent on doing its damnest to constantly tether them back together, Dean _can't_ , when it should be so easy to. All he has to do is think of Cas going off the rails on God-juice and he's right back in that place of fear and hurt and anger. So much anger.

And yet, here they are. Slate wiped clean one more time.

&

 

("Cas, I swear to god. I'm _this close_ to killing you myself."

All around them, Purgatory nightlife droned on steadily. There was a rumble in the distance that sounded like thunder, but, so far, there hadn't been any sign of rain.

"Maybe you should," Cas told Dean, entirely sincere about it, like Dean wasn't just blowing smoke up Cas' ass, like he'd offered them an alternate solution acceptable to all parties involved. Yeah, wasn't happening.

"Would you cut it out already?" he barked, moving around Cas so he could duck down near the river bed. The back of his neck tingled; with how close Cas was when he turned to face Dean's way, with the constant threat of death maybe. Both. None. Hell, Dean could hardly tell which way was up anymore.

Cas just said, " _Dean_ ," like it was the only argument he needed. Like it even _was_ an argument and not some sad sack plea that Dean, what? Went all Jack Kevorkian on the guy? Gave him a clap on the arm and sent him back to the wolves? Come on.

Instead of the sip of water Dean had been going for, he smacked his hand in a hard splash across the surface and stood back up. "See, now you're pissing me off."

"I am a _magnet_ ," Cas argued, getting fired up.

"So? I'm not?"

Cas tore his gaze away to shake his head, like Dean was a special kind of dumb so now he'd have to go about explaining this the slow way. "Those Leviathan are after _me_ \--"

"And now they're after _us_." Dean gave him a two-can-play-that-game grin. It spread the whole way across his face, stretched thin and fake. All Cas did was stare.

"When we reach the escape hatch, you know what will happen--"

That wasn't something Dean wanted to talk about, thank you very much. He moved around Cas in a pretty blatant attempt to drop the conversation. Cas, though, grabbed Dean around the arm and forced his company.

"Cas," Dean warned, but Cas just picked back up where he left off, still riled up.

"No, you _know_ , Dean. Even if I believed I--" He let out a hard breath and dropped that line of thought in a surrendering, white-flag way that hooked into Dean's own thoughts, making something poke, unwanted, in his head. "I _can't_ go through," Cas told him.

Dean took a pause to nuke his emotions somewhat, because right now he was near that point where he thought his fists did much better with words than his mouth. "We don't know that."

Cas looked away again. When he looked back, he dropped his hold on Dean, looking ten times more grim. "Dean."

Dean started to shake his head. He moved in close. It put them right up on top of each other practically. "We don't know that," he repeated quieter, though just as firm, and when Castiel opened his mouth to argue, Dean cut that off too. "Look, it's a long shot. Hell, I know that. You know that. We all know that, Cas. But I'm not just going to _leave_ you here, dammit. I'm not going to haul your ass off to some corner to die based on, what? A _hunch_ you might not get out? Come on!"

Cas met Dean's eyes directly. He held the stare a long time before saying anything at all. "I still say it's unwise."

"Yeah, well, I say you've always had crap for brains. Besides, you think I wanna face Sam after all this, tell him I left his nerdy BFF behind?" He gave Cas a wide-eyed look that implied Sam would cry real, legitimate tears. It was complete bullshit, and they both knew it, but still.

Cas stayed solemn, though. "Sam will be the least of our problems." And that was said with a glare that swiveled around and fixed pointedly on Benny, who'd at least had the decency to pretend he was giving them some privacy, even though sound carried in this place. When Dean realized where that pissy scowl was aimed, he heaved out a sigh and stepped back out of Cas' personal space.

"Seriously, you two need to go ahead and kiss, get that over with," he snarked, squatting back down near the stream. The water was cold and fresh and it, more than almost anything else, made him homesick so bad it was hard to breathe sometimes. Something about the normalcy of it. A stream was a stream was a stream, there in Purgatory and the real world too.

He could hear the gravel crunch under Cas' feet when Cas turned again to stare down at him. "That _vampire_ ," he started out testily, "is an abomination. Why would I ever want to kiss it?"

Dean snorted, running a handful of water over his face. First time he did that, he half-expected his skin to melt off. Now it was a godsend. "Yeah? Tell that to your thorny Meg love."

"Meg was..." There was a long enough pause there that Dean leaned all his weight onto his right hand, which he braced against the hard soil ground just so he could swivel his head around and stare judgmentally up at Cas. Cas, at least, had the decency to avoid Dean's gaze.

"No," Dean said, light and cheery, "please. Go on. I'd love to hear this."

Cas swallowed hard while he ducked his head, then he seemed to draw himself tall again. "There was a time I had only the hallucinations of my brother to keep me company. And the demon Meg. I found one preferable to the other."

Dean wanted to snort again, because that was a crock of bullshit. Cas didn't _have_ Meg. He had an evil bitch watching over him that was planning to use him as Crowley bait the first shot she got. Somehow, though, he managed to hold that in.

He didn't have to like it, but that whole creepy caretaker/hot-for-nurse thing. It was what it was.

Dean dried his hands on his jacket and stood back up. "Friggin' weirdo, you know that," he told him, but it was all affection.

Cas looked pleased that Dean didn't go down the _everything you do is wrong_ route with the shaming and yelling. Maybe he was a little stunned, too, which told Dean how often it happened that he bit his tongue in favor of lashing out. That wasn't a great feeling, and it was no real surprise, then, that he felt a responding swell of annoyance. When in an emotional crisis, default to anger. That was the Winchester way.

"Alright, quit looking at me like that," he told him. It had some sting, though not a lot, and Cas eventually stopped with the sappy staring right around the time Benny came slinking down the loose rockbed.

" _Boys_. Not interruptin', am I?" He said it with enough drawl that Dean felt uncomfortable at what he was hinting at. Not that Dean wasn't used to getting the _Dean + Cas_ ribbing from demon and angel alike, but it seemed more pointed than usual after everything they'd been through the past year.

Cas didn't take his eyes off Dean while he told Benny, "Yes," pushing it out through his teeth like some bad ass fending his territory. Mentally, Dean rolled his eyes. You'd think by now Cas would've gotten over whatever bug had crawled up his ass about Benny, especially since Benny saved his hide from a Leviathan only a couple days back, but the dude was pricklier than ever.

"Really?" Benny pretended to be sorry about that, overly so. "Go figure, me cuttin' through one of your starin' contests. That almost never happens."

Cas, about as equipped to filter sarcasm as ever, entirely missed the joke. "It happens often, to the point I no longer believe you're sincerely apologetic about it."

"Nooo," Benny gasped.

"What would be the point of lying?"

"You tell me, baby bird."

"Holy crap," Dean cut in, with his head falling back, gaze lifting towards a perpetually grey sky. "Kill me. Kill me now."

Benny kept his smirk on Cas. "That would be counterproductive, now wouldn't it?"

Cas took a step forward. Benny wasn't used to Cas and his frequent memory lapses when it came to not invading one's space, so his eyebrows lifted high when he had an angel up in his face all of a sudden. "If you lay even a single finger on Dean--"

Benny threw Dean a help-me-out-here glance, though he was wry about it, like Cas was nothing more than a fly that had started buzzing near his plate. "Hey, brother, mind puttin' the leash back on this one?"

Which, of course, only made Cas take another step closer. Dean decided he'd had about enough of that, so he took off and didn't care one way or another right then who followed.

Cas was the first to break the stare-off. Dean heard his foot fall a couple beats after his, and then the low chuckling of Benny right behind them.

Together they broke through a tangle of trees and headed back through the forest.)

 

&

 

Sam swings by one afternoon with a tool box.

Dean's going through the books one more time, just in case, but Sam is a welcome distraction. Dean gets up and follows him to the backyard.

They exchange only a few words in greeting. Mostly they nod real manly at one another, communicating in grunts. Tools will do that to you.

Without so much as an explanation, Sam slicks his hair out of his eyes and gets to banging on the back porch.

Dean watches with a wry fascination. He's also a little put off by the fact that he's not the man of his own damn house, his brother is, but mostly he's struck feeling again like he's face-planted inside some topsy-turvy la-la land, where every day is opposite day.

Sam swings the hammer a couple more times. He stops and blows the bangs out of his face. It's like a damn beer commercial ad. Which Dean could really use, especially if he's just going to be standing around staring like hammering nails is a spectator sport.

He slips back inside and is pulling a beer out of the fridge when Cas pokes his head into the room.

"Sam?" he guesses, listening to the banging noise that's picked back up.

Dean lifts his eyebrows real big to say: you betcha. He takes a slow sip and leans against the counter a second, watching while Cas moves through the kitchen, drifting towards the source of the sound.

Dean grabs another beer and passes it to Cas on his way back out. "Come on."

Sam is squatting now, lining the hammer up with a nail pressed into the railing. At the sight of Cas, he smiles real big. "Hey."

Cas greets him right back, taking a swig of his beer. It's late enough in the evening that the weather's cooled down, but not so late that the bugs have come out.

Dean settles onto the steps a few feet from his brother. It puts him in range of the tool box, which means it's only a matter of seconds before Sam nods at him, gesturing for a handful of nails. "So, repairman," Dean says while he hands them over. "Seriously with that? I thought you were yanking my chain."

Cas sits beside Dean. He smiles into his second sip, but Sam's frowning.

"It's a job," he defends, focusing on aligning things correctly. Not like the place can look any more wrecked than it already does.

"Helluva different career path," Dean can't help but dig.

"Than what?" Sam matches his tone. "Hunting?"

Probably Sam doesn't mean that personally, but it's exactly how Dean takes it. After all, they've had this same fight nearly half their lives. Repairman is just the newest act of rebellion, though they've flown through them all it seems -- working at the movie theater in the town their dad took down a wendigo in, bagging groceries where there was that nest of vamps, Stanford. Sam's always been looking for a way out.

"Did you know," Cas cuts in, "there are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the Earth?" He's staring up where the blue is beginning to fade away to pinks and purples with the setting sun. A couple stars, the closest ones, are only now becoming visible.

Sam looks properly chastized. Even Dean relents. "Alright," he says. "We get it. No fighting. No need to go all Rain Man on us, Cas."

"Good for you, and I wasn't. My point is, I am interested in astronomy."

He's practically gloating around the rim of his beer bottle, though, so Dean knows that's a crock of bullshit. Mostly. Cas is a professional mediator.

"Yeah?" Dean plays along. "Galileo? Go for it."

Sam taps the hammer to the head of the nail. "What else, Cas?" Then he kicks at Dean's boot. "Hey, where's my beer?"

Dean swipes right back at him. "Get your own."

"Yeah, you know what I realized today? I'm not the little brother anymore," Sam brags, like that has anything to do with, you know, anything. "Technically."

"Oh, technically?" Dean mimics, teasing him, before scowling. "Bull."

"Not bull. Truth. Five years, Dean. Do the math."

Dean does. He adds it up in his head and --

"33," Sam says, puffed up like he thinks he's real clever. "You?" He already knows the answer -- same -- so Dean leans the other way and scowls at Cas.

"What about you? You got something to share too?" Then he challenges, "You even have a birthday?"

Cas stares at him for a long beat, then he squints at the label on his bottle of beer. "My exact age is... difficult to fathom--"

"Yeah, you're Methuselah." He rolls his eyes, waiting. "So?"

Cas stalls, then huffs out the inevitable. "November." Dean raises his eyebrows at him, still not satisfied. Cas shifts under the scrutiny. "Second," he adds, wilting under the pressure.

The date pings at Dean's brain for some reason, and when he realizes why, it's Sam who gets the brunt of his bewildered glare.

Before Dean even says anything, Sam is on the defense. "I know," he gets in quick.

"November second," Dean says disbelievingly.

"Cas needed a birthday," Sam starts trying to explain, full of logic and reason, but Dean isn't having any of that.

"So _November second_ ," he accuses.

"I know."

"Mom's birthday."

Sam sighs. "Dean..."

"Fine, you know what? Whatever," he drawls, leaning back onto his elbows. He drinks his beer and smacks his lips. "Awesome." Crickets start to chirp.

When Cas gets up and heads back in, not exactly happy with the new tension at his expense, Sam aims one of those 'your soul is dark and btw you have a frozen heart' looks his way that, frankly, more than anything, makes Dean want to smack him upside the head. But even though Sam is a pain in the ass, he's right. Dean overreacted and he knows that.

He stands, feeling guilty enough to hand over his beer. Sam reaches for it with a smile, looking pretty damn pleased with himself like Dean being charitable is the result of his shaming, so Dean yanks it away just before Sam can get to it.

Sam rolls his eyes and tries to grab the beer again, but Dean uses the advantage of his height to hold it away from him.

"Seriously, Dean," Sam whines, falling out of his crouch. "You done?"

Dean grins and teases one more time before giving up the game. Sam looks appropriately irritated that first sip.

"For what it's worth," he says, waiting until Dean's got his fingers around the door handle. "Mom's birthday?" Dean turns back around slowly, not so sure he wants to hear what Sam has to say because chances are it'll suck, but he gives him his attention anyway. Sam's voice softens. "It was your idea, Dean."

Figures.

 

&

 

Cas is upstairs in his room flicking through dresser drawers, in one hell of a bad mood. Dean hangs back in the doorway and doesn't get acknowledged, even as he dips his weight forward and claps his hands together, once.

He gets ignored, too, when he makes a noise in the back of his throat.

Well, whatever, he tried. The guy doesn't want to talk. He's not going to force a conversation. Dean is on his way back out when Cas says, "What do you want, Dean?"

Feeling busted, Dean swings back around. He nods at Cas, grinning sheepishly. "Knew you noticed."

"Probably because my eyesight continues to be fine."

Dean lingers in the hallway awkwardly. "Right. Listen, Cas. I shouldn't have..." Halfway through that, though, Cas turns his back to him, and it makes Dean stall on the apology. It fades into lameness, an uncomfortable silence taking over once more.

"You're entitled to your feelings," Cas finally tells him, sounding like some new age, gong-smacking, granola-muncher. It's like he actually believes that shit too.

Dean grimaces. "Entitled to my feelings? Where'd you read that crap, back of a tofu box?"

"The TV."

"Cas, buddy. Just say no to Oprah," Dean jokes.

Cas slams the dresser door shut and turns back to Dean. "I don't need your advice, or your help, or whatever defense mechanism this is. I did, once, need your assistance. You offered," he tells Dean. "Had I known the significance, I would have..." He breaks off and looks away, exhaling loudly.

Drawn in by the emotion in Cas' outburst, Dean takes a couple steps inside Cas' room. It's the first time he's done more than just sneak a peek on his way to the toilet. "Would've what?"

Cas heaves out another breath, defeated. Then he meets Dean's eyes again and squares his shoulders. "Accepted," he admits.

"Okay," Dean says, even though it still doesn't feel right. Their mom's birthday is tangled up in so much history. Giving that over to Cas... the wrongest of wrong.

It doesn't matter though -- none of this matters, the mantra of his freaking life -- and it's freeing to let this roll off of him when normally he would've held onto the anger. It feels good to not have to care for once.

Cas is narrowing his eyes at him, the easy acceptance from Dean throwing him off. "That's it? Just, 'okay?'" The imitation is a poor one, mean and gravelly-sounding. The finger quotes don't help.

"What, you want me to yell some?" Now that he's in here, he's eyeballing Cas' room. He's less casual about it than he was before too. Cas is watching him closely when Dean continues, "Always knew you were a freaky bastard," and flops onto his bed.

That gets him a confused tilt of the head.

Dean ignores it and looks at Cas' things instead. The walls are plain except for a piece of art hanging over the bed, some weird, manic-looking thing that seems better suited inside a crazy person's head. He's got a bunch of framed photos spread around but Dean doesn't look at them closely enough to see who's in what. Bed's pretty comfy too.

Cas is still staring at Dean like what's going on now is beyond his comprehension level. It's familiar enough that Dean feels grounded by it, and he sits up, pulled to the edge of the bed. "I was a dick and you didn't do anything wrong." He makes himself hold Cas' gaze. "Capiche?"

Cas maintains that eye contact. "Good."

"Good?" Dean parrots. He snorts. "Man, people skills. Still a work in progress."

"Dean. Get off my bed."

Dean does, exaggeratedly so. "Touchy."

"Now leave the room," he commands next.

"Bossy too."

"Your brother's downstairs and in case you hadn't noticed, he means to bond. With you, who knows why," he says under his breath.

"And such a little bitch," Dean marvels. He pats Cas on the back of the head as he goes, shying away from the retaliatory jab.

They're both smiling as Dean clunks his way downstairs.

 

&

 

"Maybe you should just... I don't know, accept this? Or, okay," Sam is quick to tack on when Dean starts giving him the _the hell is wrong with you_? stare, "not, like, grab ankle and take it, obviously, but. It seems like this is out of your hands."

It got too dark to see outside, even with the porch light on, so they moved things to the couch inside. Sam's given up the hammer and nails for a lecture.

"Okay. And do what?" Dean winds up taking his frustration -- all that helplessness -- out on Sam. It's not fair, but, hey, what are brothers for. "Garden? Work with Cas at the damn pet store?"

Sam blows out a breath. His stare, locked on Dean, isn't even a little bit amused. "You ever think maybe it's supposed to be this way?" Again he has to cut Dean off, who can't believe he's hearing this right. "Look, all I'm saying is that for the first time in forever... I don't know, I feel like I have my brother back."

That cuts the fight right out of him. It knocks Dean flat on his ass, easy. "What am I supposed to say to that, Sammy?"

"Nothing. Seriously, don't. Just... think about it, maybe?"

And then, because this already isn't an uncomfortable enough conversation, Sam decides to make it way more terrible by bringing up Cas. Not that Dean isn't genuinely curious, wanting answers for all the _how's_ and why's and _when's_ , but there's a thing that happens where Cas is concerned, where talking about him always puts Dean on edge.

Which means he's defensive right away, a stiffness to his body language that FYIs he's going to bail the second this nosedives into touchy-feely territory. "What about him?" That's gruff too, just in case Sam needs a verbal warning as well.

"How much has he told you?"

"About?"

Sam's eyes are almost pitying -- that, or they're trying to mollycoddle him by sheer power of gaze alone -- and it's enough to make Dean feel hot all over, like his skin's too tight all of a sudden. "I don't know, Dean," he says, the same way most everyone else just comes right out and says _duh_. "Everything? How he fell, for starters."

That gets Sam a snort that says _and you're supposed to be the smart brother, right._

"Them tablets--" is as far as Dean gets into that before Sam's practically flapping annoyed limbs in his face, like Dean's got only a few working brain cells left and even those are too stupid to live.

"There were trials, Dean." And that's just brief enough -- and vague enough -- that Dean's mind starts spitballing out possible scenarios; he doesn't know if Sam means Cas had to face trials, or what, but based on their long, screwed up life history, already he can guess that these things sucked. He hates them by default. "It's not like we found a loophole or, you know, some magic button that closed everything," Sam says. "We had to earn it."

Dean feels it as soon as hears it; there's a heaviness around his neck, because he knows without needing to be told that he would've been the one to shoulder the weight of the trails. It would've been his life to risk, not Sam's, not Cas', which at least explains why future-Dean is the worst. Guy's probably walking around with a crapload of PTSD.

"I don't know, man, those first trials," Sam's saying, staring off like the memory's coming on hard, "I felt like I was dying. I can't even imagine what Cas--"

"Wait, hold up. I do the trials."

Sam's confused gaze lands back on his. It's also consoling, which immediately sends Dean's stress levels skyrocketing because --

"I did them, Dean."

That is a gentle admission. Like Sam already knows Dean's going to take the news badly. And of course he is, because what the hell?

"What the hell, Sam, why--"

"Dean, come on. Look at me. I'm fine, aren't I? I handled it."

The world's still spinning, so Dean supposes Sam must've. Obviously he must have. No demons, no angels. Whatever they did, they did it right. Or Sam did. Dean's not about to say he's fine with that, because, successful completion of trials or not, the idea of Sam taking on something as huge as closing the Gates of Hell, _and_ Heaven, makes him want to drive his fist into something solid. It makes his heart speed up out of control, too stupid to realize there isn't even a threat anymore, Sam clearly did a bang-up job, but it's a frantic, _what-if_ scare he can't quite tame.

He ignores the way this all comes with a feeling of failure, like somehow he let everyone down by not being the brawn. What the hell did he even do, then, if Sam was doing the trials, and Cas was --

Right, Cas.

"So Cas was, what, collateral damage then?" he bites out. He's not even serious, he's mostly just lashing out because he handles his emotions about as well as a 3-year old in the throes of a tantrum, but Sam's eyes are doing that softening thing that means he's trying to shelter Dean again. Which means Dean is right. "You're joking. Sam."

"It was his choice," Sam jumps in real fast. And, fine, so Cas has always been all too eager to get himself killed for their sake. Doesn't mean Dean has to like it. "That last trial, Dean." He shakes his head. "There wasn't any other way. Trust me, we looked. And Cas was okay with it. Something in you has to already know that. It's like he's built for sacrifice."

It's probably easier to hear this from Sam, except Dean feels like it should be coming from Cas. It's his story to tell. Which is true, but then Cas would be staring at him with that look that says 'I rebelled for the Winchesters and all I got was this stupid t-shirt' and he didn't even get that much. Cas got a secondhand birthday that belongs to their dead mom.

Dean stands up quick. Sam shifts back to allow the sudden movement, but he looks as if he's trying to decide whether or not Dean bailing is relevant to how badly he thinks Dean needs a hug.

There are some things Dean just doesn't want to know. Hell, there are things he shouldn't know. How exactly Cas fell, what it took to make that happen; Dean is drawing a line at that.

"Dean?" Sam pitches up at him, full of worry.

Dean deflects. He also scoots away from Sam's all-too-knowing gaze, heading for the DVD shelf. "Sam, my man, I think you need a re-education on a little thing called--" He finds what he's looking for and holds up _Back to the Future_. "'Space-time continuum.'"

It's not the knowing too much that Dean fears, okay, it's what he knows. Gun to his head, when Dean finally gets home? He can't say he won't try and stop some of this from happening. Stop Cas. And that realization sits too heavy in Dean's head. It's an anchor and he's getting dragged down.

The movie starts up and Dean drops back onto the couch, Sam watching him.

Dean kicks back and lets the good gospel of Doc Brown fill the room.

 

&

 

"Cas, you up there?"

Dean's got the downstairs to himself, so he attempts something he already knows is futile. He tries praying to Cas, even though it's stupid. Beyond stupid. It's like Purgatory, though. Cas, wherever he is, might be out there somewhere with his ears on, and Dean will take that slim chance of being heard over radio silence.

"I could really use your help, man," he goes on. "Or, hell, a sign? Something to tell I'm not gonna be here forever? You copy?" He waits for the air to change in that way that means he's no longer alone. He listens for wings.

"Cas," he sighs, his hand covering his eyes. "Please."

 

&

 

Dean's given up the research as the time-suck that it is. They've gone absolutely nowhere with it, finding nothing useful in any of the books stocked in the library. They don't even have their dad's journal to go through because future-Dean is a needy bastard and he took the thing with him. Took the Impala, too, and that might be what Dean misses most of all, but he's not about to tell Sam that.

Sam, who's finally started looking at him with this fond twinkle in his eye like Dean's the older brother he's never had before, which is a crock of bullshit, Dean's always been awesome. Except, apparently, that he is a whole lot not-awesome in five years time.

Dean is basically bored out of his mind and experiencing cabin fever in its every stage when Cas comes downstairs one morning, dressed to go. Dean immediately perks. He could do with a taste of the outside world. See what this town is really about. Observe the natives. Etc, etc.

Only Cas has other plans.

"I'll be back," he says to him, not noticing or not caring of the way Dean's sliding to the end of the couch, antsy and eager to leave. Cas' words have him coming to a dead halt though.

"What do you mean, you'll be back?" He's laughing some because this right here? This is crazy talk out of Cas.

"I have work to do," Cas gives back, like a patient reminder, like it's been circled right there on the calendar the whole time and Dean's the nagging housewife who didn't notice before making other plans. "The remote's over there," Cas tells him with a distracted nod towards some cluster of junk on the coffee table near the TV. It's not even a futuristic TV with hologram people inside, so Dean refuses to have his spirits uplifted by it.

He settles back onto the couch, kicking his feet up. His face becomes a mask of disinterest. "Whatever."

It's possible he's pitching a Sam-sized fit, but that is the cabin fever talking. And being the star in your very own time-traveling bio-pic from Hell. Or Purgatory, whatever.

Cas hesitates near the doorway, opening his mouth a good two or three times and snapping it shut after each one.

"Spit it out already," Dean barks, with just enough bite.

"I could stay?"

Worse than cabin fever is being someone's pity-stay. No way is he going to agree to that and then deal with Cas fussing over him because Dean's too emotionally stupid to deal with his feelings like a grown-up. So he's bored. Big deal. He'll find something to un-bore him.

He pushes to his feet, swiping his hands together. "On second thought, I got tired of lookin' at your mug days ago. Go, I'll... okay, I don't know what I'll do, but who cares, I'm in the future, right? I'll make my own fun."

Cas looks unconvinced.

To prove his point, Dean walks over to the bookshelf that lines an entire wall of the library. It's stocked with books Dean mostly figured had to do with demon mythology and the occult, but when he actually glances at the spines he sees a ton of non-fiction mixed in there as well. There are also framed photos lining the shelves he deliberately doesn't look at. "See," he says, grabbing a paperback, "fun." It's one of those _Chicken Soup for the Soul_ kind, and Dean almost physically shudders once he notices.

"Because you love cats," Cas deadpans. Of course, because it's a book about -- ugh.

Dean shoves that back into the space he got it and pretends he has no idea what Cas is talking about.

"Alright," Cas says eventually. "I'll leave now."

Dean keeps his back to him, still feigning interest in the library collection. He notices a photo of Sam, Amelia, and Cas all together, all wearing cheesy Christmas sweaters, though two of them in the picture look way more in on the joke than the stoic third party. Who is Cas. Dean almost grins, but then he remembers Cas is watching, so he clears out his throat and runs his finger down the spine of another book that he makes sure beforehand isn't some damn cat guide.

There are footsteps, then, and then the sound of rustling fabric, a door creaking open and closing. Keys jingle. Followed up with an oppressive silence as Dean feels the air settle around him in a way that means he's completely alone. He lets out a breath, this moody, melancholy thing, only to turn around and practically drop into a dead faint.

Cas is still there.

"Son of a _bitch_ ," Dean cries raggedly, hand clutching at his heart where he's pretty sure the thing is racing towards an unhappy ending.

Cas smiles.

 

&

 

Cas has a car. Cas has a driver's license. Dean demanded to see it as soon as he learned about the vehicle, but Cas, sketchy weirdo that he is, refused, deflecting in a way that has Dean's interest roused, though he's willing to play along if it means he can sneak a peek later. Probably it's got a bad photo ID and Cas is feeling twitchy about it.

Point is, Cas' car. It's straight out of the 70's, this old junker that would've fit right at home in Bobby's salvage yard once upon a time ago. It's a brown, gold colored Volvo, rust eating away at the paint, but Cas shows it off proudly like it's the best thing he owns.

They head into town to stop for lunch at this old timey diner. Along the way Dean takes in the passing scenery. It's not like he was expecting jetpacks and hover boards, but he's a little disappointed to find out that 2017 isn't much different than 2012, not counting the fact that people somehow let Paris Hilton be relevant all over again, which is Dean's first sign he might have an apocalypse on his hands.

Once seated, with a pile of breakfast food plated at the table between them, Dean has to shake his head and laugh to himself, marveling once more at how damn _normal_ this all is. Diners and good ol' Americana. Seriously. If this is some kind of karmic punishment, or a parallel universe, it's a fucked up one.

"What?" Cas asks, noticing. He's doing the head tilt thing, though it's lost some of its charm now that there isn't any of that otherworldly innocence to back it up anymore. Dean never really thought he'd ever miss that alien-type naivety Cas seemed to wear like a second skin, but then again, Dean wasn't really prepared for a lot of this stuff, was he?

"Eat your food," he deflects, taking a bite out of his bacon, with purpose.

Cas squints at him, not satisfied, but he lets it go. Dean gets the feeling that happens a lot. Cas just dropping the conversational ball at Dean's command. Like maybe he's got it in his head that Dean's a closed book, or like Dean's say is the final say.

Shame pricks at him, and annoyance too. Stupid emotions.

He grabs a napkin and wipes the grease off his fingers, taking a long sip from the glass of orange juice Cas ordered for him, claiming the place didn't serve beer on Sundays. Backwards hillbilly town, for real. "Just," he starts out with, and Cas' eyes flick towards his right away, "this is weird, right? Me being here." He's not spilling his guts, and that's not exactly news either. Except continuing the conversation at all is its own concession, that's the whole point of it, and Cas seems to get it.

"Since we met, I have come to know all new definitions of the word 'weird,'" Cas gives back sincerely, verbal air quotes and all.

"Yeah." Dean laughs some. "Tell me about it." And that's saying something, since, you know: dude was once a millenia old angel that got to peek in on humanity at its most freaky.

Cas glances around the diner -- it's sparsely filled, just them and a few other patrons; the waitresses are back behind the counter, circled in a ring of gossip, while music filters out of overhead speakers, this constant, upbeat 1950's loop -- before he braces all his weight on the table, leaning in, his tea and donut (seriously) bracketed between his forearms. He traps Dean in a strong gaze.

"I have regrets," he tells him, going soft-eyed, like admitting that is dredging up some hardcore embarrassment.

Dean feels his stomach dip. It's guilt, mostly, but something else too, something like nerves. "Okay," he begins slowly. "About?"

Cas holds his stare. He holds it for so long, the back of Dean's neck prickles. Whatever that's about. Then Cas' gaze slips to Dean's mouth, and his neck is tingling for a whole different reason. Just as quick as it happens, Cas is pulling away, settling stiffly against the backside of the booth. He glances out the window, momentarily distracted by a guy who's having this aggressive-looking phone conversation right outside the diner.

"Cas," Dean starts.

"You should eat," Cas tells him, using Dean's own tactics against him.

"Sure, no. Drop a load like that, then expect me to go on shoveling food into my piehole. Okay."

"We were confessing," Cas says, like that explains anything.

"Uh, no. I? Was whining. You were--" Dean makes an unsure sweeping gesture between them. "Whatever that all was," he tells him.

Cas dunks his donut into his tea while Dean watches, waiting. "Do you feel burdened now?" he asks after a pointed beat. It makes Dean tense up, all the friendliness zapped right out of the conversation. There's a weighted, curious look on Cas' face, like Cas is screwing with him. It has Dean remembering a game of _Sorry_ they played once, the box and its displayed title held up like an empty apology.

Before Dean can work up a response, Cas says, "I forget sometimes you're not you. Our-you."

Whatever that means. Except it's just another confirmation that all he's ever going to do is screw up every relationship with anyone he's ever cared even a little about. If he's on Cas' shit list -- Cas, the guy who once looked him dead in the eye and announced like it wasn't a big fucking deal that he rebelled against of all of Heaven for him -- then, hey, maybe it's an inherent thing. It's him. Maybe Dean's a bad person and everyone else has finally caught on.

"Stop," Cas tells him. He's got some actual command radiating throughout his voice, and it's the first time since Dean got here really that he's sounded like something other than some Stepford Bitchbot. "I can see you tormenting yourself, so stop."

Easier said than done. But already Dean can feel his walls going back up, defenses back in place. This future isn't even real. Who cares who hates him in it. More power to them.

"This is your problem," Cas tells him. He's given up on the donut to instead trap Dean in another one of their stare-offs. Dean tries not to squirm away from it, mostly because he's got years of exposure to make him immune to the gazing by now, he's a friggin' pro, dammit, but also because there's nothing to squirm _about_ and he wants Cas to know it. It's petty. So what. "You agonize endlessly."

He chuffs out a breath through his nose, pissy and sarcastic. "That one of your _regrets_ you were talking about?"

Cas' eyes narrow like he can't figure out the logic Dean took to jump to that conclusion. Which is nothing new, him and Cas haven't been on the same page in -- ever, maybe.

That's great. Fine, even.

Dean digs into his meal and eats in silence, ignoring how Cas hasn't let up on the loaded gazing and doesn't seem like he intends to. Silverware and dishes clatter around them, along with snippets of other people's mindnumbingly boring conversation. Dean bites into his pancake with forced gusto.

 

&

 

The silence lasts the entire car ride back.

It's uncomfortable and stifling and the one time Dean tries to break it by turning on some music, Cas waits three seconds then switches it back off, which is such an asshole move Dean's almost proud of it.

Except once they get home, the fun continues. Cas has decided, apparently, that he hasn't done anything worth feeling sorry for, and Dean's head is too far up his own ass to relent first, so for a solid two hours they take wide berths around each other. Cas goes up and down the stairs often, stomping with each step, and Dean has to close his eyes and calm himself by way of Metallica because, holy crap, it's grating as hell.

Eventually a door slams, and Dean knows Cas is in the garage. He hears the radio come on -- freaking local news -- and then boxes being shuffled around soon after.

It doesn't matter if Cas hates him.

Still feels like shit though.

With a sigh, Dean peels himself off the chair in the library he's been hiding out in. The closer he gets to the kitchen, and to the garage, the louder the radio gets.

It's so loud, actually, he's able to sneak in without Cas noticing. There's no car in the garage, but there's a tarp balled up in the corner he recognizes as his, and an oil stain on the ground that means his baby, wherever she's at, needs someone to look under her hood.

Cas grabs a crate and hefts it atop another one, still without noticing Dean. His movements are jerky, his back full of tension. He's either pissed, or one hell of an enthusiastic stacker.

Dean calls out, "Hey," loud enough to drown out the radio, and Cas is so startled, he almost knocks his pile over.

He glares when Dean starts laughing, but it's such a helpless response. Dean has been the victim of so many sudden-angel-poofings. It's kinda awesome to be on the other side of that for once.

And anyway, it puts things into perspective. This is dumb. Fighting is dumb.

Cas doesn't let go of his bad mood as easily. He wipes the dust from his hands onto his shirt and goes back to the crates.

There's a calendar on the wall stuck on September 2013, Dean notices. Also, he's pretty sure the scattering of tools are Bobby's. Mostly the space is a mess of boxes.

The radio turns to a weather update when Dean gets bored and says, "See you perfected the silent treatment. You pick that up from Sam?"

Cas keeps going with his chore. One crate atop another, his biceps flexing beneath his shirt. "Should I apologize, then? That seems to be a requirement with you."

"What? Cas, no."

"I'm not sorry."

"Okay."

Cas drops the latest crate on top of his pile and turns back around. "Why are you here, Dean?"

"Beats me," Dean says, because this is starting to feel like a losing battle. Cas is radiating anger and disappointment in waves, enough to make Dean feel like shit all over again.

"Because you feel burdened," Cas guesses.

"Jesus christ. Yeah, Cas. I feel burdened," he snaps.

Cas quirks his head at him. It's like he wasn't expecting that answer, which is nuts because why else ask it? "Why?"

Dean chuffs out a humorless laugh. He closes his eyes, squeezing the bridge of his nose. "I'm not talking about this with you."

"Then why are you--"

"Because I'm sorry," he barks. "Alright? I'm an asshole. Always have been, always will be." The anger fades fast, leaving him exhausted and resigned. He sighs, leaving.

"Dean," Cas calls out, stopping him. It works, and Dean turns back to him, emotionless and indifferent. Cas looks sorry, too, like he knows this conversation isn't fair to either of them but he doesn't know how to fix it.

He doesn't say anything though, just stands there looking like hell warmed over. Dean's heart is a traitor. The dumb thing flops around once or twice, suckered in by the sad sight.

Finally Dean sighs. He grabs a nearby box and joins it with the others, helping Cas out, his own white flag.

They get half the room cleared, and Dean's listening to the guy on the radio talk about the freak lack of deaths in town, natural or otherwise, a streak spanning something like a week already, when Cas speaks up again.

"I don't want to fight with you," he says, and it makes Dean feel two inches tall for whatever reason. Call it a guilt complex.

"So we won't."

"It's not that simple."

"Yeah, it is." Cas doesn't look convinced. Dean puts the last box on a work table beside all the others. They've got something of a wall built. "I get it, future-me is king of all dicks. But I can't fix someone else's problems, Cas."

"You don't understand," he sighs.

"Make me."

"There are problems that go back further. Ones you and I have had scratching under the surface for a very long time now."

"Come on, man, I'm trying here. You want me to say sorry? I am. I am so damn sorry I screw up everything I care even a little bit about."

"Dean," Cas says to stop him. He looks as crappy as Dean feels. "The blame doesn't fall entirely on you."

Dean scoffs. "'Course not. Just most of it, right? Look, this was a stupid idea." He starts backing out of the room. "Forget it."

"Of course, because running away is the most cowardly thing to do, and you're always eager to reject being brave."

"Christ, what the hell is your problem, Cas?"

Cas huffs, almost laughing. "Nothing."

"Really? Doesn't feel like nothing. You got something to say, say it."

Cas looks away. "Never mind."

"Sure. Never mind. Until when, I say the wrong thing again?" Cas doesn't answer, so Dean pushes on. "Man, you gotta let it go. Whatever he did, whatever I did. Forgive and forget."

"Well, maybe I don't want to."

"Cas..."

Cas backs up, withdrawing. He's like an entirely new person, like Dean switched channels and landed on a different show. "We're done in here and you've helped considerably, so thank you."

Dean knows avoidance when he sees it. He's old hat at it. "Good talk," he says sarcastically, being cruel about it.

"Dean," Cas says again.

"We really that screwed up?" he asks, his voice going rough from how badly the idea of that hurts, even though it kills him to say it.

It takes him a moment, then Cas says, "No," which is so obviously bullshit, but Dean lets the lie go. "We're fine," forced and faked for his benefit, is harder to swallow.

 

&

 

The couch sucks.

That is the main motivating factor that gets Dean to officially become a second level dweller. The bedroom is upstairs -- his bedroom; future-his, whatever -- and even though moving into it feels like a concession, like that's it, Dean's giving up, this is his new life now (no) his back doth protest another night on what might be the world's shittiest piece of furniture.

Not that Dean sleeps much anyway, because he doesn't. But the luxury of a bed lures him.

His current worldly possessions are more lacking than usual, dwindled down to his coat, his boots, and the clothes on his back. The jacket he tosses onto a chair tucked into the corner of the bedroom. It's green and tattered, three out of four of its wooden legs scraped and damaged. Thrift store find, probably. Same for the lone night stand in the room, which has been stained black, poorly so. It only makes the nicks in it stand out. Dean wonders if he put those there himself, some kinda proof of residence, then cuts that thought off.

He sits at the edge of the bed. It sinks with his weight. The covers -- navy blue the whole way across, though, god help him, there is, of course, a floral trim skirting the bottom -- are made up and pulled taut with army precision. That at least feels familiar.

The night stand's got a lamp on it that'd turned on when Dean flicked the switch by the door. There's a radio alarm clock too, and when Dean tests the knob on the side, fiddling with it out of boredom and curiosity, Foreigner blurts out loudly to tell him he's a long, long way from home. Dean shuts it off quick and checks the doorway, pulse pounding in a way he doesn't really have an excuse for. No sign of Cas though. It's quiet out there, except he knows Cas is in his own room just down the hallway.

The night stand drawer opens to, no surprise, night time supplies for night time activities. Some lotion, a travel size packet of napkins... well, well, a half-empty bottle of lube. Future-Dean, you kinky bastard.

There's a journal in there too. Old and bound in leather. Dean snags it, thinking with some honest-to-god anticipation, alright, he's gonna read himself the sordid recountings of his future doings, but also: a diary? Really? How many branches on the tree of lame-assery did he hit on his fall down?

But the whole thing is blank, empty page after empty page. Except, though, there's a lump in the middle, like a bookmark, and when he turns to it, his stomach crawls up his throat. There's a picture of him and Mary. Dean and his mom.

Looking at it, he can't remember where it's from, or why it would have been taken in the first place, but they look happy. Real happy. He must've been all of four. No Sam, no dad either, but they're smiling big like nothing bad could ever happen to any of them.

Then Dean's not alone anymore..

Cas is in the doorway, leaning lightly against the wooden frame. It's a stupid reaction, but Dean's first instinct is to hide the picture, to protect that kid-part of him and tuck it back out of view. He doesn't. The way Cas is looking at him, careful and accepting, means he's probably caught Dean having himself a good ol' nostalgic mope over it a time or twelve before. Awesome.

"Hey," Dean says, gruff. "Just--" He makes an aborted gesture that lets Cas fill in the blank, huffing out a self-deprecating laugh after.

Cas lingers for a long second, then makes up his mind and comes in. He hovers close by while they ignore the elephant in the room like the emotional robots they both are.

"Dean," Cas finally tries, but, nope. Dean doesn't want to hear it.

He stuffs the journal, and the picture, back in the drawer and stands up. Cas eyes the night stand with a look that says no good can come from denying a sharing-is-caring moment, but Dean's had his fill of those lately. "Hey, I'm starved. You hungry? 'Cause I could eat."

Cas' eyes search Dean's. By power of stubborn determination -- and a lifelong habit of repressing his emotions the second they start becoming a problem -- Dean is able to withstand it. "I suppose," Cas says slowly.

 

&

 

Cas has toast for breakfast every morning, always with peanut butter spread on it like a freak and the bread burnt so badly the smoke detectors in the kitchen no longer have batteries.

He listens to the radio often. It's set to some local station that drones monotone news, hourly breaks for the weather, and a mattress warehouse jingle that plays so often, Dean sometimes hums it without thinking, making it the world's most confusing earworm.

He wears mostly jeans and t-shirts in layers and there's a closet full of lint-covered sweaters Dean wouldn't be caught dead in. No tan overcoats.

Cas also gets the newspaper from the front stoop every morning and only reads the wanted ads, there are house plants he mothers the same way people look after kids, and he's the world's biggest sucker for late night TV. Infomercials are a legitimate problem, all canned laughter and 1-800 numbers and lifetime guarantees.

 

&

 

"Don't you ever get tired of it?" Sam asks him one afternoon while they fuss with stuff in the garage. Dean's been spending more of his time in here now that Cas is going to work again. It makes him feel halfway useful, anyway.

It already feels like a trap, but Dean still asks, "Of what?"

"Dean, come on. You've picked up on it, right? How unhappy you are here?"

"And? My brother's a brat and I live with a hoarder."

Sam rolls his eyes at him, but he's not in the mood to be deterred. "I used to think you'd be okay if you just got out. Like with Lisa."

"Yeah, can we not?"

"You were happy with her."

"Friggin' thrilled. You dead and Cas muting my prayers. Good times!"

"You prayed to Cas back then?" Sam asks like he had no clue. Dean gives him a look that says 'not the point' and Sam moves on. "I used to think all it'd take was a home, and a little stability, and someone you loved, and you'd, I don't know. Let all that weight you carry around go."

"I don't _carry_ weight around."

"You do. So much, Dean, and I get it. Dad pretty much--"

"Stop. Seriously, I'm not crying about my feelings with you, I'm not gonna whine about all the pressure dad put on me--"

"But you're admitting it's there." Dean doesn't say anything to that, only grabs a towel and wipes the grease off the engine he's trying to restore. It's the original one for Cas' Volvo. Sam picks up a wrench and twirls it between his knuckles, carrying on. "All I'm saying is--"

Dean cuts him off with a mocking smile. "What are you saying?"

Sam gives him a bitchy glower right back and keeps going. "I see you now, and then I think about my brother who's out there not answering his phone because it's me on the caller id, and I don't want that. It's okay to want things for yourself. Hell, Dean, put me on the back burner for once, enjoy your damn life."

It hurts to hear Sam talk like that, mostly because it feels like he's being pushed away. All that does is make Dean want to cling harder. "This the Ghost of Christmas Future speech?" he wonders, treating the whole thing like a joke, which makes Sam sigh.

"Yeah, Dean, if it needs to be. I want you to be happy." And then, "I want Cas to be happy."

Which feels way too much like Sam's hinting at something.

"Good," Dean deflects, flipping the engine over. It lands with a thunk that shakes the whole table. "We're on the same page here."

"Are we?"

"Absofrigginlutely."

"That's not a..." Sam sighs again and gives up. Dean beams at him.

 

&

 

A bell announces his arrival seconds before he's managed to push the shop door all the way open. Dean steps through, and right away the sunlight gets swallowed up.

With that cheery ringing still going off -- there is actually a bell above the door, god help him -- all human noises disappear in favor of animal ones. There's barking. There are cats. There are more birds than Dean knows what to do with. It's all kinds of musty inside, it smells like a barn, and it's not, Dean's noticing, the place of rainbows and dreams that Cas made it out to be.

"Hi! Hello there," someone greets him, chirpy-sounding. It's the kind of perky you can't fake either. When Dean manages to take his eyes off a nearby crate full of overactive puppies -- god, what has he gotten himself into, this is something out of his nightmares -- he sees a small, pretty, blonde-haired woman behind the counter. She's twenty, twenty-five maybe. His mind automatically leers out a _Go, Cas_ at that, because, hey. He gets it. He'd work at a dump too if it meant flirting with a cute girl all day.

"Can I help you?" she asks, coming out from behind the register. Dean gives her a non-lecherous (okay, slightly lecherous) once-over, appreciative of the tight jeans she's wearing. She's also got one of those mega-watt smiles on, the contagious kind he can't help but return.

"I hope so." He leans in conspiratorially. "See, I'm looking for a scrawny little guy. Kind of a runt, about yea high." He holds a hand mid-length up his chest, in no way indicative of Cas' real height, but the girl -- her name tag says _Andy_ \-- looks on appreciatively, like she digs this challenge. "Sort of perpetually gloomy."

"Very funny, Dean," Cas responds with dryly, stepping out from between the aisles of dog leashes and litter box supplies. Dean blinks owlishly at him, because _what the crap_ , there is a lizard perched on his shoulder. That is not normal.

"Dude," he says.

Cas slowly lifts the thing off of him, mindful of the way its creepy little claws have dug into his shirt, setting it on some coat hanger-looking contraption. The lizard clings right to it, content, while Cas shuffles on past, reaching down to stroke a stray cat's brown and fuzzy head along the way.

"Oh! You know Castiel?" the girl asks him, pleased, bouncing up on her toes just once. Dean uses the reminding glimpse at her name tag to catch a complimentary view of boobs and only feels like a perv for doing so when Cas notices and gets all pissy in the face about it. That is not Dean's fault, okay. You can't keep a hot-blooded male trapped in the bowels of Purgatory for who even knows how long and not expect him to apply theoretical use of his manhood once he's out, just to make sure everything's in working order.

Ignoring Castiel's glower, Dean sticks out a hand and grins. "Name's Dean," he introduces himself with. Truthfully, he's expecting Andy's face to light up with recognition, because surely Cas must, at the very least, have mentioned his pal back home every once in a while. You know, the guy he bunks with. Best buds. But she only grips him back firmly, flirty, and shakes his hand, no awareness at all. Something about that disappoints him more than it probably should. Right away he can feel his interest plummet from the seven it was teetering at, to about a two.

"Andy," she replies. Her hand slips from his and she looks up at him coyly. "So, about that companion you were looking for..."

"Think I found what I was looking for, actually," he tells her kindly, moving past with an apologetic smile when she looks bummed that she might've read the situation wrong. Cas is already motoring between aisles again, and Dean has to dodge random animals weaving around his legs to catch up.

"Nice place," he says once he's close enough, just him and Cas in an aisle of dog food. It's all bulk-sized, practically making towers of it.

Cas keeps his back to Dean while he fusses with a tiny ass bird that's flown to the top shelf, trying to corral it into his cupped hands. Seriously, anyone here ever heard of cages? All too easily Dean feels the imaginary splatter of bird crap on his back and has to cringe it away.

"Did you not have something better to do?" Cas finally says, and it's not in a voice that implies he's happy to see Dean, but the opposite. Like Dean's cramping his style or something.

"I can't stop by and say hi?" he sasses. It might've been a more resounding argument if Dean hadn't immediately ended it by jerking out of the way when the bird Cas is after takes off in his direction. It zips right past him, this blur of blue and yellow feathers, and lands two shelves over with a smugly given chirp. Cas sighs at Dean like Dean himself is personally responsible for it.

"What?" he defends.

Cas huffs and moves around him. Dean follows.

"I'm working, Dean," Cas tells him.

"Yeah, I can see that," Dean snarks. It gets him a side-eyed scowl just before Cas ducks into another aisle, down low this time where the bird's squeezed itself into the farthest corner of a bottom shelf, one full of fish tank accessories. They're all kind of dusty-looking, so Dean figures it must be the crap no one buys.

Eventually, with some quiet words of encouragement too soft for Dean to catch, Cas snags the thing and is able to gently pry it out.

Dean moves out of the way to let Cas deposit the fluff ball wherever it usually hangs out, except, instead, Cas straightens back up and angles his way into Dean's personal space. Dean doesn't even have time to ask what's up; Cas carefully uncups his hand, just enough for Dean to see the chirp machine inside. And it is chirping. More so when it notices the giants looming over it.

"Meet Eremiel," Cas says softly.

Dean snorts, eyes flying up to Cas'. Cas is looking down at the bird with this look like he's handling something precious, like God put it there Himself, which has Dean dialing down the sarcasm, though he can't keep it all out. "You named it after an _angel_? Subtle, Cas."

"Also," Cas says, eyes flicking to meet Dean's this time, "I'm not gloomy. And I'm fairly taller than you'd have people believe."

It's a weird conversational detour, made extra-weird by their close proximity and surroundings, which includes the background noise of dozens of animals randomly chatting it up, but Dean goes with it. He leers this time too, a little anyway. "Not people. _Andy_." There is so much innuendo in that, it's like the equivalent of a _go get 'em, tiger_. He doesn't actually expect Cas to match it or accept it as the challenge that it is -- as far as Dean knows, Cas is exactly the same tense, virginal nerd he was as an angel -- but Cas looking almost offended isn't something he's expecting either.

Dean practically does a double-take. His mind is spitting out a mental image of the woman in question. Well, okay. It's mostly just a memory of boobs. They might not even be Andy's. Just, boobs. "C'mon. You can't tell me you're not interested."

Cas covers up the bird again, its tweets immediately muffled. Dean can tell he's taken a wrong turn here somewhere, but he doesn't know _where_ , except, apparently, Cas still _is_ that same uptight guy he always was. Instead of finding that off-putting, it's actually a relief. Like there's still something _Castiel_ in there.

"Never mind," Dean says, before Cas can say anything. And it's likely Cas would've clutched the bird prudishly to him and insisted Dean leave, the way he's starting to look. "How about you show me where Emeril Lagasse here goes."

Cas stares long enough to suss out Dean's honest intentions, or whatever, before he comes over all soft and mushy-looking like he's accepting this as the olive branch that it is. Yeah, yeah.

"Emeriel," he corrects. He goes to scoot around Dean, but instead of leading the way, he knocks their shoulders together and walks them off so they're side-by-side, and close. Cas is warm, and solid, and Dean almost doesn't even mind the giant ass spider staring him down from the insides of a plastic terrarium, he's that damn content.

 

&

 

"Pie," Dean acknowledges in a praising, worshipful manner. There are practically cartoon forks appearing in his eyes. "You brought me pie."

"Technically," Amelia says, smacking at his hand when Dean gets too close to the pie cooling on their kitchen table, "I brought pie for everyone. This is communal pie."

Dean retreats, but not without stealing a whiff. Good ol' apple pie. God bless the union that is Sam and Amelia, seriously. Amelia is good people. Here is undoubted proof.

"Dean, you're drooling," Sam drawls in what is pretty much the vocal equivalent of an eye roll. Also, jealousy.

"Yeah, you only _wish_ you got pie," he snarks back.

Sam stares. Then stares some more. "Dude. I get pie _all the time_."

"Also," Amelia reminds the both of them, "this is pie for everyone. Share," she commands Dean with a pointed finger thrust bossily in his direction.

"Lady, I make no promises."

Cas comes up from behind, changed out of his work clothes. Dean didn't understand why he did it the first few days, but he gets it now. Work clothes wind up smelling like the zoo.

"You brought Dean pie," he says. Dean could almost hug him, that's how pleased he feels. Instead he settles for smiling widely, accepting this as the validation that it is.

"Mine," he says, making grabby hands for it, but Amelia pulls it from the counter and puts it in the fridge. Everyone winds up staring at him kind of pointedly, like _check out the weird foodaholic_ , but whatever. He'd like to see them live without pie for how long Dean's had to live without pie. They'd be feeling clingy towards it too.

Sam laughs, breaking the quiet, and Amelia does too. Even Cas looks like he might be following a laugh track in his head, and Dean can't feel too bad about that, can he?

"You're in a seriously rare good mood," Amelia tells him. It might be the exact wrong thing to say; Sam suddenly zips up and Cas grows serious too. You know, moreso than usual. "Oh no," she says, realizing. "Damn. Crap, I just called out the elephant in the room, didn't I? I actually called it out."

Right. Because the Dean that exists in this time, future-Dean, he's sort of a jackass. A fun-sucking, all-work-and-no-play-makes-Dean-a-dull-boy, friendless dick, pretty much.

"Awkward," Amelia sings out under her breath. "Way to go, self."

Sam throws an arm around her shoulder and gives her a loving, almost protective, shake, which Dean sees and then abruptly feels twelve kinds of awkward over, like he's witnessing something private.

"No," Sam assures her emphatically. "Not at all. Dean's totally acting weird."

Dean blinks. "Thanks."

"Dean's been acting similarly all day," Cas, the traitorous bastard, throws in. "I assumed a head injury was to blame."

Amidst the huff of laughter that follows, Dean snarks, "Ha-ha-ha. Real funny."

"C'mon, Dean," Sam defends, light-hearted, "you're always such a--"

"If you call me 'grouchy Smurf,' so help me," he warns.

Sam snorts. "Uh, I wasn't? I was going to say--"

"Gloomy," Cas fills in, with a small, _small_ smirk at Dean that lets Dean know this is payback for the pet shop incident earlier. This is 100% that.

Amelia blurts, "Surly," as her own colorful descriptor.

Dean settles back against the kitchen counter, thumbing the wet neck of the beer bottle he's been nursing. "Man. Feel the love in this room."

Sam pries himself away from Amelia enough to bump against his shoulder. "You love it."

And, fine. Whatever. Maybe Dean does a little.

 

&

 

"Hey, so. I think we have a case on our hands," Sam comes right out with one afternoon, clicking open his laptop at their kitchen table. It whirs up happily. "Uh, a restless spirit?" He at least has the decency to sound sheepish about it. That's because ghosts are chores, boring ones at that, but, hell, Dean hasn't put his knife through something's throat in weeks; chore or not, he wants in.

Sam notices how Dean's interest rises from _barely listening to a word you're saying_ to _talk about nothing else but this one specific thing_ and rolls his eyes. "Seriously, Dean?" he says, judgy about it.

"Hey, you shut your trap." Sam holds back an eye-roll, but only just barely, while Dean hones in on the important stuff. "What do you mean there's a case? Where?"

"All over town, apparently. People keep dying."

"Huh." Then he adds, with his own slowly doled out judgement, "Thought you don't hunt?"

Sam frowns at him in a way that lets Dean know he doesn't care for that comment, and also that he's a 12-year old girl. Dean ignores it, letting Sam know that he knows Sam's a 12-year old girl.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Dean rubs his palms together and grins. "Time to bust out the ol' supplies box. That's stashed somewhere, right?" When Sam gives him a _yikes, about that..._ face, Dean's excitement withers into how-did-you-turn-out-so-wrong older brother disappointment. "Seriously?" he demands.

"Like you said," Sam defends, though he's a wimp about it. "We never hunt anymore."

Dean scowls, then points a finger in Sam's face. "You're buying salt."

 

&

 

Cas lowers himself onto the chair beside Dean.

He's at the table again, this mess in front of him that is actually, to the trained eye, organized chaos. It's everything he needs to make his own EMF detector, old school Walkman that he swiped from the neighbor's garage included. Suckers.

Cas, smart guy, puts two and two together. "Ghost?"

Dean jiggles a battery into place. "Yup."

 

&

 

Here is the problem with settling somewhere: when there's a haunt they need to shut down, they can't just dress up in monkey suits and flash fake IDs. Sam's like some freaky beloved member of the town, known by all. Ditto Cas.

Dean's pretty pissed about it, since pretending to be a higher-up for the sake of gaining information is always the easiest and thus preferred method, only Sam refuses to accept the blame Dean's so keen on pointedly emoting his way.

They could be at a morgue right now, cracking this case wide open. Instead they're still housebound, going over their limited options.

"What do you want me to say?" Sam whines, scrubbing a hand down his face to express his own frustration. "I'm sorry I have a life here. I'm sorry I have friends."

The word _friends_ gives Dean the hives. He's never been good at sharing, and he's not about to start now, and that it's his brother he's referring to and not a plate full of pie is something he's repressing and ignoring.

"Okay," Sam says, aiming for calm and an attempt at peace. "I guess that means we do this the old fashioned way."

 

&

 

They wind up at the library, sorting through periodicals and obits. It's time consuming, but in a roundabout way, it almost feels normal. Like the old times, before Purgatory, before the angels, before Ruby and Yellow Eyes and Bobby and everything else. Like how they managed some of their very first cases back when they were barely more than kids.

Dean can't help but stare across the table at Sam, who has a book on the town's history open in front of him. Sam must feel it because he asks, "What?" without looking up.

Dean goes back to paging through a crop of recent newspapers. "Nothing."

It's only when he spots a pattern in the papers, all of them with articles covering numerous suspicious deaths, that either of them talk again.

"Hey, I think I got something."

"Yeah?"

He lines them up for Sam to see, pointing at the first. _Susanna Miller_ is what it says beneath the photo of a pissed off-looking, white-haired woman. "Lady found dead in her bedroom. No signs of forced entry, no suicide note, no next of kin." Then the second. This one says _Royce Kellington_ and it's from three days later. "Same M.O. here, only it's a guy, early-thirties. Neighbor found him in the bathroom." He taps the third, the one closest to him. The paper's only a day old. "Here, though, girl comes home and finds her boyfriend swinging from the rafters."

"Suicide?" Sam asks.

"Yeah, except the guy's got it made. Look at him."

He pushes the paper Sam's way. There's a picture of the guy in question -- _Jason Walker_ according to the caption -- looking happy with his arm around a beautiful woman. By all appearances, a perfect Ken and Barbie.

"He seem the type to ride the two-legged mare to you?"

"No," Sam admits slowly, forehead wrinkling while he takes in the details. "I guess not."

Dean sweeps the papers into one big pile with an even bigger grin. "Yahtzee."

Sam stares at him long enough to make him regret that word choice.

 

&

 

They get the address for the third vic off the obituary. It winds up being three blocks from Sam and Amelia's place, a place Dean has yet to visit and has about as much desire to as he does lighting himself on fire. Which is to say, zero. He is interested to the amount of zero. They ride over in Sam's car, though calling it that is being generous. There's banjo-laden music coming out of the speakers that makes Dean feel angry inside, rationally so, and the whole thing is so compact, his knees are touching the dashboard.

Sam notices Dean's scowl, knows exactly what it's for since Dean hasn't exactly been quiet in his disgust here, and still manages to ignore it.

"How do you want to go about this?" he asks once they're parked at the curb across the street, the car turned off.

Dean takes in the house. It's a two-story, front windows all bordered with flower pots. There's a stone walkway that leads up from the sidewalk and a lawn mower in the middle of the front yard, like someone meant to come back to that later. "You know this chick?" He's only asking because of the way Sam got lost in the article earlier. Dean's seen that face Sam had on before, and while it usually means that he's over-identifying with their victim of late, this seemed personal.

Sam sighs and runs his hands down the top of his thighs, working out some tension. "Sort of. Amelia's friends with her. They, uh, yoga together."

Yoga. Of course.

"You wanna stay in the car?" Dean asks. Not that he wants to work this solo, but. He gets it. He's not going to force Sam into anything.

"Nah," Sam says, pushing open his door and filing out one long ass leg at a time. Conversation over, then. Dean manages to figure out the door handle on his side by himself and joins his brother on the side of the road.

There's a tranquility in the moment, with the sun out and traffic actually muted for once. It's almost nice.

So, of course, Dean barrels right through that calm, breaking it with literally no effort.

"I know this chick?" His eyebrows jump meaningfully.

He just figures he should probably find out beforehand. It'd be kind of awkward if he went in for an introduction and it turned out she was some ex-fling or half of a shady affair. _Manners_ , you know.

Sam looks at him like he's done something offensive, holding the stare for a long, criticizing beat. Then he sets off without him, up that path, hair whooshing in the breeze.

"What?" Dean defends.

 

&

 

The woman opens the door only a little, peeking through the sliver like she's expecting the in-laws or solicitors or something. Dean recognizes her from the picture, and he thinks, briefly, that she's a lot prettier in person than print. When she sees Sam, who is practically oozing of sympathy, recognition hits and she opens up all the way.

"Hey," she says, sounding wrecked. "Sam, right?" She tries for a smile, but the thing's too heartbroken to do anything but make Dean feel uncomfortable.

"Hey, Christine," Sam says, matching her smile with a sensitive one of his own. "How are you holding up?"

Not well, is apparently the answer to that; she breaks down crying right there on the stoop.

 

&

 

Sam hands her a glass of water before joining Dean on the sofa.

"Thanks," she says, seated in a chair across from them. She takes a small, obligatory sip before clutching it in her lap, both hands wrapped around the glass. "And thanks for coming over."

"Of course," Sam tells her. He's got his _I'm so sorry for you loss_ voice on too, only Dean can tell it's genuine. The girl -- Christine -- nods and sniffs and draws into herself.

Dean eyeballs Sam and pointedly jerks his head her way.

Sam widens his eyes and facially communicates that Dean is a terrible human being and could he please stop embarrassing him?

Whatever.

"Um, this is my brother," Sam busts out with. "Dean."

Dean pastes on a smile that says _nice to meet you; sucks about the dead guy_. Maybe it's a little careless, but it doesn't warrant another dose of shame-eyes from his brother, which is what he gets.

Christine stirs back to life some. At least she looks more tied to reality instead of internally drifting in and out of grief like she's been doing the past five minutes they've all been getting settled. "You're the one who lives with Castiel, right?"

Weird thing to know about a person, but, okay.

"One and the same," Sam answers for him, full of pride. There is something new in how Sam's smiling, something retaliatory and calculated, that Dean doesn't like very much. That instinct is only confirmed, horribly so, when Christine reaches out and grips Dean around the knee.

"Uhh," he gets out, right as she starts tearing up.

"So lucky. You've got yourself one of the good ones," she tells him with some scary intense-type emotions. "Castiel is so good," she says, holding back a sob. "Love is good."

Dean's brain starts sending warning signals throughout his body, this voice inside his head telling him to scram. He's trying to think of a nice, delicate way to ask, _lady, how nuts are you_? when his brother casts this mushy look his way.

"Isn't it?" Sam agrees with her. He sticks out his own hand and uses it to grasp Dean on the shoulder for an overly affectionate shake. Dean might actually punch him. "It's so nice to see their love so openly accepted."

Dean forces a grin, though his eyes promise there will be payback. Oh, there will be payback. "You know me. Love that Cas," he bites out through his teeth. There are physical pains, that's how hard he's working to keep up the content look.

"And you," Christine says, lobbing her other hand at Sam so she can latch on in a similar hold. The water in her lap wobbles threateningly but doesn't spill over. "You are so, so lucky to have Amelia."

Real gratitude and affection washes over Sam. "I am. You were lucky too," he says, getting this thing back on track, finally. Holy hell. "I didn't really know Jason, but you guys seemed pretty happy."

Christine gives their knees one last squeeze before pulling away. She grabs a nearby Kleenex and dabs at her eyes and runny nose, balling the thing up in her hand. "We were. At least, I thought so."

"Yeah." Sam clears his throat. "Sorry."

"I just can't understand it. You know? He wasn't depressed. He never got sad. Why would he..."

"Sometimes people are good at hiding things like that," Sam offers gently.

Christine bites on her lip like she's holding something back. And then she blurts out, "We were supposed to get married." Apparently that's a shocker to Sam, because he pulls back and sends Dean a look. One of those pointed _pay attention, this is the good stuff_ kind. Christine is tugging a necklace out from underneath her blouse. There's a ring looped through the chain. "I haven't been wearing it since... since he..."

Sam leans forward again and this time places a comforting hand on her knee. She seems encouraged by it, enough to go on.

"No one knows. We weren't going to tell anyone until we set a date. But we were excited about it, you know? We had this jar we were putting all our extra change in. We were going to save up for a cruise, because Jason... Jason always wanted..."

Sam shoots Dean a helpless look, and for a moment Dean only stares back and wonders what the hell he's supposed to do here that Sam can't do himself. Sam's gaze hardens.

It's been a while since Dean's dealt with weeping widows, but, hell. He's a professional. Time to steer this back to business. "So," he starts out cheerfully, "nice place you got here."

If Sam was aiming a pissy glare his way before, this is double that. He pulls back from Christine to further his glare, only grinning reassuringly at her once before he's back to the bitchy disapproval.

"I guess so?" she says, trying to figure out the sudden switch.

"Yeah, you should see our house. Mine and Cas. Our love shack," he says, emphasizing it with a we're-just-so-sexually-liberated leer at Sam to make up for the fact that anyone thinks there's a him-and-Cas in the first place. "It ain't like this. Kinda -- _drafty_. Cold spots everywhere. You, uh, probably don't get that in a place like this. Hmm?"

Sam's staring at him like he's the least subtle human being in the world, but Christine starts rubbing her hands down her arms like, yeah, now that he's brought it up, it is kind of drafty in here.

"That's really weird you would mention that, actually."

"Huh." He shoots _told ya so_ eyes at Sam. "Interesting."

"I think our air conditioner's been broke? I mean, it's ninety-degrees outside most days, but sometimes I swear it's an igloo in here."

"Oh, yeah. And then there's the noises. The, ah, flickering lights."

Christine's started nodding along, but she stops when Sam asks, "So, hey. Weird question, but Jason -- he wasn't having nightmares, was he? Or, I don't know, seeing things that maybe weren't there?"

Her eyes narrow into offended slits. "What do you mean? Why would you even ask something like th--"

"No! No, no. Sorry! Amelia mentioned it to me before, and I was just. I don't know."

Dean claps Sam on the back roughly. "Sam's been having a hard time sleeping through the night lately, haven't you, buddy? Come on. You have. He has," he tells her with a second, harder slap to Sam's back. Sam grunts, air knocked out of him. His mouth thins into a line.

"Right," he agrees.

"I guess," Christine says, sounding worried that she might've let a couple unhinged psychos into her house. "I mean, yeah. Yes. Right before, actually. He kept waking up in the middle of the night and freaking out, saying he saw someone in the room with us? An old lady or something? But it wasn't anything, just... stress, I think. Listen," she says abruptly, "I have to get back to packing up some stuff..."

"Of course," Sam says, on his feet before she's even finished. "We'll get out of your way."

She stops them once they're all but out the door, handing Sam a box full of junk she meant to give to Amelia earlier, before life kinda threw her one crappy curveball.

"Right," he says, taking it. He flashes those sympathy-eyes once more too, the big sap. "Thanks."

 

&

 

"How did your 'interrogation' go?" Cas asks him back home. Dean ignores the finger quotes.

"It wasn't an interrogation. Sam knew the chick. She knew you too." When Cas hits him with some confusion, Dean clears up that vague. "Christine. Pretty, mid-twenties. Boyfriend got iced by what's turning out to be some seriously random ghost."

"Ghosts are rarely random."

"Preaching to the choir, Cas. We can't figure it out, though. One of the vics is this old lady, lived by herself. No family. Obit basically said she was survived by cats. _Cats_."

"Cats can be sentient."

"Goody for cats. Second guy fits the same bill. Loner-type. No friends. Next door neighbor finds him because the house starts to smell like dead-guy. But the third one. I don't know."

The only thing that ties them together is the proximity -- all within two blocks of each other -- and the fact that this apple pie town his brother and Cas have settled in had that nonexistent mortality rate that spanned an entire week. He's half-convinced they might be natural deaths after all, except there's something off about the whole thing.

"I can help," Cas offers. "If you'd like."

 

&

 

Dean already has regrets about this.

"Follow my lead," he instructs, and it's with a heavy reluctance and an even heavier sense of foreboding, him and Cas both parked curbside in the middle of the 'burbs. All of the houses look identical, save the odd quirk of a lawn gnome in one yard, a fleet of pink plastic flamingos in another, a _For Sale_ sign hastily hitched up in the house beside that.

Cas doesn't say anything, but Dean can feel the passive aggressive eye roll in his silence as he exits his side of the vehicle. Yup. Regret. Dean does the same, and their doors shut behind them, twin clicks, though Cas' side is a little louder because Cas' car is ancient and requires some manhandling to get it to function semi-properly.

"Alrighty," Dean says, after a beat. Together the two of them head up the concrete path from the sidewalk to the front door.

When they stop at the welcome mat, Dean gives Cas another look that warns he reel in his already pretty crappy people skills some, but Cas is staring pointedly forward like he's oblivious to it. Dean snorts but doesn't say anything, smoothing out the neckline of his suit.

They're hitting up the neighbor of vic number two, the unlucky bastard who happened to stumble upon Royce Kellington twenty-four hours past that dude's prime. Dean figures they're far enough off the grid that he can try the dress-up game, though Cas is in an unbuttoned blazer -- this grey number with pockets on the front and what looks, underneath that, suspiciously like one of Dean's old concert t-shirts, which is all kinds of wrong and giving off the exact opposite _respect the authorities_ vibe they're aiming for.

Dean raps his knuckles beside the door knocker. He flashes a reassuring grin at Cas -- also ignored -- then gets almost immediately distracted by the sound of loud barking on the opposite side of the wood.

When the door swings open, there's a guy, his age, holding a mammoth dog back by the ring of its collar, clearly struggling since this thing is the Sammy of all house pets. It's huge. It lunges forward, and while Dean's first instinct is to curl inward and protect his junk, the dog is clearly not going anywhere; its owner must be used to preventing daily maulings.

"Hey," Dean says, staring at the dog with worry and also some threat -- keep away from the family jewels, Cujo -- before letting his gaze soften on the guy. "Right. This here's my partner--"

"Castiel," the guy cuts in, and it's this pumped up, psyched acknowledgment, like him and Cas are buddies that go way back and this is an unexpected but welcome reunion. Which means the gig is up, first of all, but also, the hell? Dean swivels his head around to catch Cas' reaction, but Cas is calm as ever, like some damn master of zen, or awkward public outings.

Which also means, right. New tactic then.

Dean wraps his arm around Cas' shoulders and tugs. Not expecting it, Cas pretty much topples sideways into Dean, but Dean plants a grin on his face and keeps it there, tightening his grip.

"Shucks, honey, you didn't say you knew the neighbors."

Cas squints at him, particularly at a certain term of endearment that rolls out sweet and easy -- here Dean silently communicates via facial muscle that Cas, for once in their long, messed up history, needs to trust him enough to go along with this -- before accepting that this is clearly the way the encounter is now going. Not that they'd discuss it much beforehand. Dean was planning on pulling out a badge for old times sake and winging it from there.

This... is very much not that.

"My mistake," Cas says, sounding as indifferent as always, though Dean can hear the stilted tone underneath while he adjusts. "This is Hank. Hank frequents the shop." Yeah, Dean bets. He's noticing that the dog still wrestling for freedom isn't the only thing looking a little frisky here. Hank's staring at Cas like he wishes he frequented more than just the pet store Cas slopped for. "This is Dean," Cas says, and Dean cuts in real quick.

"His partner." Just to make that clear to bedroom-eyes over there.

Cas is stiff under his arm, more so after that awkward announcement, but he stays, and Hank seems to get the point. He asks for a second to pin the dog in the bedroom. As soon as the door shuts behind him, Dean drops his arm and ignores the not-that-new magnetic pull that wants to keep Cas close.

"Zip it," he warns Cas before Cas can do anything, like question whether or not Dean's actually sane right now. They are definitely not dancing around any _so you're my fake boyfriend_ conversations, case or not. "You know this guy?"

Cas narrows his eyes like he's trying to weed out any ulterior motives in Dean's words, but it's only a quick scan, there and gone before Dean can get too worked up over it. "As I said, he--"

"Frequents the Little Pet Shop of Horrors like a tried and true stalker, yeah. Got that. Anything else I oughta know?" Dean might be playing the role of nagging boyfriend a little too on-the-nose here, but he doubts Cas'll pick up on it.

Dean doesn't get the chance to find out. The front door swings back open and Hank steps outside, sans mega-dog. He shuts the door behind him, which makes it clear what kind of conversation this is going to be; short and to the point.

"So, neighbors, huh? I catch that right?" he asks right away, right there on his welcome mat, eyes roaming between Dean and Cas in a way that immediately raises Dean's hackles. It's like he's being judged, like this dude isn't buying the 'boyfriend' thing.

"Yes," Cas says in agreement, though it comes out pretty strained while he searches for the lie to tell. "We're thinking of moving." There's a pretty lengthy pause, and then he continues, pointlessly, "...In." His eyes narrow into a squint, like even he's second guessing himself.

"He means next door," Dean adds with a sloppy grin at Cas, like aw, ain't it adorable how socially inept he is. "We kinda wanted to get a feel for the place before we made it official. Good neighborhood?"

Dean figures he can bullshit his way through some small talk before they make their escape, because it's clear now they're probably going to learn more about their vic rifling through the guy's trash than they are pumping non-info out of the neighbor.

But then Hank eyes the house beside his, face paling. "It was the first dead body I've ever seen," he murmurs.

Holy christ, alright then. Bingo.

Dean can feel Cas flick a look at him but he ignores it and plays it cool instead. "Come again?"

Hank turns his nauseated look Dean's way. "You know. The suicide?"

The surprise on Dean's face is genuine, and when Cas looks his way again, he sees it mirrored there. There wasn't anything in the papers that hinted the guy killed himself.

"Come to think of it, yeah," Dean plays along with, easily. "We might've heard something about that. Right, Cas? Thought it was just... your run-of-the-mill, natural order kinda thing. You know: time's up. Shouldn't've had all that extra bacon. You heard different?" He tries to keep his tone neutral, nosy only in a 'potential buyer' kind of way, but it's hard when it finally feels like they're getting somewhere.

"Heard? Damn, I found the guy."

Dean tacks on a grim smile, fake as hell. Like this isn't the sort of stuff he's been coming across since he before he knew how to read. "Must've been scary."

Hank is unimpressed with Dean's patronization. "Yeah, I guess."

He leans in like his morbid curiosity's getting the better of him. "How'd you find him?"

Hank looks to see if Cas is following along. He is. Dean understands Cas well enough to know that the intense, loaded stare he's watching with isn't some declaration of epic devotion, Cas just hasn't learned the art of tact. Hank isn't as fluent in Cas' facial expressions. He seems to take it to mean Cas is spellbound by his every word. And those words, when they happen again, get more throaty, more boastful. "You know, we weren't real close. The dude always kicked over my 'mingos."

It takes a minute, and a pointed gaze Dean dutifully follows, before he catches on. Hank is eyeballing the cluster of pink plastic flamingos staked into his front yard.

"Like, have beef with me," Hank carries on. "That's totally cool. Sorry you're so mad at life, bro, but I get it. Man is evil. But what did those little guys ever do?" Again with the flamingos. Dean feels his patience running thin.

Cas, awesome Cas, makes a noise in the back of his throat that calls their attention back to their initial conversation. "Perhaps that's why he took his own life. You said you found him?"

Dean's man enough to admit that Cas taking the bull by the horns gives him, like, half a boner. The reminder that Cas, underneath the nerdy exterior and perpetually grumpy glower, is a soldier with enough kill notches under his belt to star in even the most experienced of serial killers' wet dreams, always makes Dean's spine tingle. In a not altogether unpleasant way. Take-charge Cas is pretty bad ass.

Hank looks like he's sporting impressed wood too. Freak. "Yeah. Yeah, man. In the bathroom. 'Cause I went over there to ask, you know, what gives? What's your problem, bro? 'Cause I look out my window and half my motherflippin' 'mingos are pulled out. I go over there after a zen sesh, 'cause I want to rap this out peacefully. So I'm knocking and knocking and no one's answering, and then. It hits me. That smell."

Dean can guess where the rest of this is going. "The flamingos, avenged!" he jokes, dorky and grinning real big.

Hank looks violated. "Man, no. Not cool."

Yeah, okay. Him. Dean's the not cool one here. Sure. Jesus.

"But," Hank sniffs, "yes. It was Royce."

"Had he been deceased long?" Cas cuts in, and he asks it in a way that's really, really clueless about proper human etiquette. And common decency. It gets slightly worse when Cas squints his eyes and accuses, "Did you disturb the body?"

Hank holds up his hands like shit's getting weird. "I saw Royce, okay, I..." He lowers his voice and looks shamed. " _Screamed_. I mean, it was a dead body, the dude was on the floor. I just wanted to ask him why--"

"He bad-touched your birds, we got that. You said suicide. Why?"

For the first time, Hank seems aware of how unusual this conversation is. He looks at Cas, then eyeballs Dean real doubtfully, then stares back at Cas. "Just, I don't know. He was young. Fit. You know? No one like that just _dies_."

So he wasn't found choking on a bottle of pills then. Okay. What a great use of their time this has been.

"Right." Dean gives him a tight smile and otherwise doesn't try hiding his annoyance. "Well, thanks. And good luck with all of..." He gestures half-heartedly out towards the flamingos. "That."

Hank looks touched. He lays his hand across his heart. "Thanks, man"

Dean's smile turns into a grimace. "Yeah, no probl... nope, I don't even care anymore." He throws his arm around Cas again, eager to book it. And if this part is a little fun, no one has to know it but him. "You ready, snookums?"

"Goodbye," Cas tells Hank obediently, whose whole face falls when Cas steps closer into the embrace. Dean almost feels bad for the guy. He must be crushing pret-ty bad. Probably it's that, and his sadistic nature, that makes Dean stop and bury his face into the side of Cas' neck. For real, that happens. Cas goes rigid as soon as Dean's up in his space, and when he inhales and rubs his nose into Cas' skin just where all that unruly hair begins, he feels, and then hears, Cas' own sharply blown out breath.

"Okay," Hank says. That is the mother of all depressed tones. "Good luck with the move, I guess. See you, Cas."

With his face still planted firmly in the crook of Cas' shoulder, Dean gets them swung around and moving down the pathway. He throws his hand up in one last taunting farewell.

He only _just_ resists a fist-pump.

 

&

 

There's a bar Dean lets Sam take him to, though they go with Cas in Cas' scuffed up, crummy Volvo, Cas at the wheel. Dean slides into the passenger side automatically, ignoring Sam's scowl when Sam thus gets delegated to the very small backseat with its lack of proper seat belts and general aura of doom. The thing's probably never even be Christened properly, which is a thought that circles with interest inside Dean's head before being discarded as irrelevant.

Once there, Dean has to duck a few nods of recognition from people he's obviously never seen or met before though they still know him, aiming straight for a booth in the back. Sam follows while Cas heads to the bar.

"Awesome," Dean says as soon as he's settled in, leaning all his weight onto the elbows he's got planted on the table between them. "I get to spend the night pretending I know these people."

Across the booth, Sam kicks back into the padded polyester behind him, dragging out a coaster that'd been tucked into a napkin holder near the wall. "Relax. You're antisocial, Dean. No one's going to bother you."

Dean eases up, but still. He casts a mistrustful eye around the place. It's a small town dive, so it's pretty decent -- the jukebox could use a new setlist, not to mention a whole other era -- but even so it's a lot trashier than he's used to seeing on Sam. Cas, too, for that matter. When Dean looks over at the bar, gaze dragging where his mind's already taken him, Cas is standing there propped against the hard top at a lazy angle, one leg twisted casually over the other. He's talking to the bartender, this guy with a red clean-up rag sticking out of his belt and so much product in his hair it's a wonder there weren't any 'health code violation' stickers slapped on the front entrance.

"Who's Fabio?" Dean asks, still watching Cas interact with the guy like it's some weird nature program he's stumbled onto accidentally.

"Uh, don't know," Sam answers back, craning his neck around to catch a glimpse, which is like the least stealthy move ever, jesus christ. But then it gets worse for Dean when Sam aims his stare back at Dean with this look like Dean's been caught mid-pining. "He's probably just some guy..." he says. Dean does not like the sound of those ellipses.

Refusing to be led into the conversation Sam clearly wants them to have, he goes for deflection. "Or one hairy chick. Didn't know Cas had a type."

So, okay. Turns out he might be dragging himself into the conversation. It's only because the more he watches -- and Dean's not, like, outright staring here, but he definitely keeps getting distracted by movement that just so happens to pull his gaze innocently in that direction -- the more it looks Cas is maybe being flirted with? Or is mutually flirting? Dean's never seen Cas do anything but prickle &/or gulp audibly in the face of sexual situations, so it's kind of hard to tell. There _was_ that one time Dean witnessed Cas suck face with Meg, but he'd bleached his brain soon after that so the memory's good for nothing. And Hank didn't count. Cas was oblivious to that creepy ogling.

"Huh," Sam says. He squints in that general direction again, but at least he's not so blatant this time around. "You know, that guy _does_ kinda look like Cas' ex."

Several things about that make Dean choke on air.

"What?" he gets out once he's able. He's not proud of the fact that his eyes are watering, but he's pretty sure his brother just told him Cas is gay, so.

Totally calm, Sam just shrugs and runs his fingers across the top of that coaster, over its faded Coca Cola logo. "Yeah, there was, huh. I wanna say... Robert was his name? John Bon-something or other after that. Uh, Jimmy Page?"

Dean's bewildered stare turns into a glare as soon as he realizes Sam's just naming Led Zeppelin band members to fuck with him. "You're a riot, you know that?"

"Cas doesn't swing that way," Sam says with a laugh, and it's at Dean for being so easily suckered. He gets a little more serious, though, when he starts to think about what he's saying. "Actually, come to think of it, Cas doesn't seem to swing any way. Not really. It's weird, because he definitely _connects_. I've just never seen him take anyone home. Girl or... Fabio."

Dean's mind is chugging along, trying to process both Sam's words and the weird things his feelings are doing.

Then a shadow falls over the table, and Cas is there, three bottles of beer wedged between the fingers of his right hand. Dean pulls off to the side, feeling caught, but Cas carries on like he hadn't overheard a single word. He sets a beer in front of Sam, and one in front of Dean, and the last one beside that, right as he gets into Dean's side of the booth, close like their every past _dude, personal space_ conversation has since fallen to the wayside.

"Thanks, man," Sam says, taking his first sip. There is a twinkle in his eyes as his gaze skips from Dean to Cas, back to Dean again, and Dean responds with a glare that demands Sam cool it down while also managing to threaten bodily harm.

"What'd I miss?" Cas asks, glancing back and forth between the two of them. The guy's not an idiot. Socially retarded by almost all counts, sure. But it ain't like Sam's being subtle over there, all but drawing hearts into the table like a pre-teen.

 

&

 

An hour later, Cas gets up to take charge of the jukebox since Dean spends a solid five minutes complaining about the audible assault that is Whitesnake.

He does it against his will and after some light-hearted heckling, with a look that implies Dean isn't as charming as he'd like to think he is. For that, Dean raises a toast at his retreating back, because he's a smartass, but Cas ignores that like he ignores everything else Dean does to purposely harass him.

When Dean quits watching him go and settles back into the booth, smiling, Sam is already pinning him with that stare that says Dean is in way over his head and also can he plan his and Cas' wedding please?

"Knock it off," Dean complains, quick to get defensive. He's only two beers in, but the knowing, honest-to-god sparkle in Sam's eyes makes his stomach feel a lot fuller.

Sam -- who's started already on his third drink -- holds out his palms to emphasize his innocence. Then he rolls his head to the side, nodding at the men's room across the bar, before hoisting himself off of the sticky pleather.

"Don't talk to strangers," Dean calls after him, once Sam's started weaving in between the scattering of tables and chairs on the way to the bathroom. The glare he gets is worth it.

Left alone and immediately bored, Dean takes a sip that's gone too warm and taps absentmindedly. He wonders about his own bladder. And then he notices Cas' wallet forgotten on the table, as if it was left there purposely to tempt him. A glance behind him finds Cas staring at the jukebox like it's done something to bother him personally, his attention on it fully, so clearly that's a green light for Dean to snoop.

Whatever, so Dean's moral compass is as broken as the rest of him.

Cas' wallet, when Dean says to hell with it and peeks inside, is full of scraps of paper, all of them scribbled on. He thinks it fondly, but he thinks it all the same: dude is such a hoarder. Dean pulls one out. All it says is _beer. batteries. steak dinner????_ and it's in his handwriting. Grocery list, probably, but it tells him squat.

There are also movie stubs with titles he's never heard of and a few old receipts and Cas' license that Dean sees and immediately feels privately thrilled by. Bingo. He flips the wallet so he can see the photo through the little plastic window, a laugh already building itself up, but Cas, to his disappointment, looks completely normal. A little perturbed, maybe, like the line at the DMV was brutal, but that's generally Cas' default setting.

Dean scans the whole license real quick, logic telling him something else has got to be weird about it otherwise what would be the point of Cas keeping it secret, but the height, eye color, the shiny Texas state hologram, Castiel Winchester; all of it is absolutely normal.

And then it hits Dean.

Castiel _Winchester_.

For the record, Dean's emotions have been in a constant, fucked up tangle since he got here, but the way the alcohol in his gut seems to suddenly be sweating out of his body and how his pulse roars loudly in his ears is all brand fucking new.

Few things are sacred to Dean. His baby, the contents of her truck, and family. That's it. And, okay, so Dean's known for a while that Cas fits in there somehow, in some messed up way, but _Winchester_? That name means something. Hell, it means the kind of _something_ that apocalypses are started over.

Cas helped them save the world. More than once. And when he came over all human, he probably needed a whole new identity. Sam probably suggested the surname as a gesture of kumbaya and brotherly appreciation and future-Dean more than likely went along with it because Cas is, well. Cas. Whatever that even means anymore.

Dean folds the wallet and puts it back where he found it. He sips his beer and tells himself nothing's changed, and he's halfway to believing that when the jukebox skips to the next track and some Zep starts playing.

Robert Plant is crooning, " _This is the springtime of my loving, the second season I am to know_ ," when Cas comes back, scooting in beside Dean. He throws him a look, too, one that lets him know there's nothing accidental about the song choice.

Fuck Dean's life, then. For real.

 

&

 

Dean's not drunk, but by the time they get home, he is buzzed, pleasantly so, alcohol slowing everything down for him in a way he's always liked. It's as if the world seems lighter, or maybe that's just the weight on his shoulders. All of it just... lifted, gone. For a little while, anyway. Bizarro town, sketchy ghost? Who cares.

The front door closes soundly after Sam, who raises a weak hand in farewell before bailing on them, the alcohol having hit his ginormous frame way harder. It took him twice as long to feel it, but once they got him there, there he stayed.

Dean stands in the kitchen and clasps Cas fondly on the shoulder for really no reason other than the fact that, you know what, he appreciates Cas' camaraderie. Simple as that, and always has.

Cas smiles his small, pleased smile, and Dean likes the sight of it. So he decides to do something about it.

He walks into Cas, making Cas stumble back, though he's coordinated about it. And mostly sober, the bastard. He gives Dean a look like he knows Dean's drunker than he thinks he is, but when Dean keeps that contact going, it softens into curiosity. Then it's confusion, because then Dean's actively pushing at Cas until Cas' back hits the refrigerator with an actual, reverberating thump. The thing shakes noisily, its contents rattling. From the sound of it, they are now down one jug of milk.

Cas swallows, and Dean watches that bob of his throat, mimicking it unconsciously. It makes Castiel's eyes go narrow, like he's trying to figure out what the game is. Dean's staring at his mouth, so, you know, not real subtle here, and Cas, world's least sexually aware ex-angel, finally catches on.

There's another swallow, panicky. "Dean--"

He shuts up, though, when the backs of Dean's fingers drag across the stubble of his chin. He's been wondering about that. There isn't a beard, not quite, but it'll leave a burn.

Emboldened and half-nuts and, okay, _okay_ , turned the hell on, Dean slots a leg between Cas', and that's when Cas gets with the program.

If Dean was expecting a protest, it's not what he gets. He's feeling like this has been long overdue, like shit's finally making sense, and Cas must have those same thoughts too because he sinks his weight down like he's making a point, arching his back just enough to work up some barely-there friction. At the contact, Cas' eyes flutter shut and Dean's desire goes from this purely hypothetical, low simmering thing, to full-blown want.

This is playing with fire. But somewhere in the back of his mind, Dean knows he's got himself a safety chute in case he needs to bail out, because this is not his timeline. He won't be stuck here forever. So he'll take what he wants, what he's maybe wanted for a while now, and fuck the consequences because there are no consequences. And if Cas is on board, what the hell are they still dancing around for?

Cas' eyes fly open and a long look passes between them. Then Cas is pitching forward like someone yanked a rope around his chest, that first move all on him, which does for Dean's brain what anvils do for cartoon coyotes. It basically sends him freefalling off a tall cliff.

The kiss is a long time coming, and far from perfect; they're both trying too hard at first, wanting it too much, on two totally different pages. It's aggressive, and not in the good way. Cas seems a couple counts behind, and Dean's got a lifetime of firsthand experience and, besides that, many'a motel porno skipping through his head. Eventually it settles into something slow and open-mouthed, with Cas tilting his head back against the freezer door, and Dean is full of enough alcohol that this definitely seems like a good idea. Probably his best idea ever.

Cas' fingers find then clench at the back of Dean's shirt sleeves, pulling the fabric tight. Dean wraps his own fingers, one hand's worth anyway, up the back of Cas' neck, angling him even more, and Cas makes a low, encouraging noise into it.

Just as it's getting good and all the blood in his body has started on a detour to parts of him more centrally located, the kitchen doorknob rattles.

It's a very loose, intrusive, drunken rattle, and Dean barely has time to pry himself off of Cas before the door swings open and Sam stumbles through.

"I'm gonna--" he says right away, and if it's strange that Cas is shoved up against the fridge or that Dean's maybe looking a little flushed, Sam doesn't notice or doesn't care. He makes the universal hand motion for either _throw up all over your floor_ &/or _pass out here because I'm too drunk to drive_ , which Dean nods at, waving him in with all the annoyance and impatience of a man suddenly cockblocked from years worth of pent up sexual frustration.

"Puke goes _in_ the toilet," he barks at Sam's retreating form, only because nagging his brother is as ingrained in him as breathing. Sam merely tilts forward and lets his momentum carry him towards the library and its non-comfy couch. Dean gets ignored.

Moments later, Sam slips out of sight, though there's a crashing sound a couple of seconds after that, which means Frankenmoose is knocking over furniture.

Talk about a cold shower. Cas straightens, pulling himself upright but still looking like he was well on his way to being thoroughly debauched. He's staring where Sam was last seen.

Dean laughs awkwardly. He scratches behind his neck, torn between wanting to finish what they started and never, ever acknowledging it again.

He should be freaking out. He should definitely be freaking out by now. He's not.

"Weird night," he eventually goes with. For the record, he knows it's a lame ass thing to say as soon as he says it, but he's owning it anyway.

Cas stares at him curiously. Then he says, "Sam should be resting by now."

"Drunken sleep of shame. Technically," Dean corrects.

The curiosity in Cas' gaze stiffens into irritation. _Hey, dummy_ , it says, _I don't care for that reference_. "That's not what I was implying." Oh.

_Oh_.

Cas takes a step forward, and if there was ever any question that he was once a badass angel of the Lord, here would be undoubted proof, because he's looking capable of some serious smiting power, actual mojo or not. His gaze has gone hard, his attention dwindled down to a singular point, and, hell, the way he's looking at him, that point seems to be Dean's mouth.

"I intend to finish what I started, Dean," he tells him, still maneuvering himself in that alien-like way Dean hasn't seen on him since -- shit -- since before the Purgatory souls, since before the Godstiel alter ego fuck-up.

From the other room, Sam makes this pathetic, guttural noise, like he's either just realizing how drunk he is, or he's about to spew pints worth of the cheap stuff all over their curtains.

Cas marches right up on him. "Dean," he says to steal his attention back. It's his clipped, soldier tone, which means Dean straightens the fuck up and listens. When Cas' gaze slow-crawls its way down Dean's body, less like a creepy appraisal and more _intently_ , like he's rubbing it in Dean's face that Dean's still popping a boner after everything, never mind the two interruptions from kid brother Sammy, it puts things into perspective again.

"Right," Dean says, rough. "Okay."

Cas is on him so fast, Dean rocks back with it.

 

&

 

Getting up a flight of stairs while making out with another person is like some intense mindfuck.

Dean stumbles on the third step, and the seventh, and on the ninth he almost manages to keel him and Cas both over the edge of the bannister, which would not have been conducive to his game.

Cas, though, by way of sobriety, somehow keeps them upright. Though there is a lengthy delay in their upwards trek when Dean, impressed by all the heroics, shoves Cas against the wall, pins him there at a slight angle, and kisses him until both their dicks are standing fully salute.

When they reach the landing, it's another couple minutes of shameless groping.

They wind up in Dean's bedroom because it's neutral ground. And also, lube. Not that Dean's thinking that far ahead.

He shuts and locks the door after them, with a silent prayer that Sam not choke on his own puke in the middle of the night, please and thank you.

It gets real then. More real, anyway, than the ten minutes ago when Dean thought it would be an awesome idea to fondle his best friend. Who is a dude.

Cas says, "Dean," like he wants to keep going, what are they just standing around for.

Dean unbuttons his shirt. He swallows hard and breathes out through his mouth and takes that shirt, and the one underneath it, off. Cas stares at Dean's bare chest the same way Dean's pretty sure he stares at pie. His heart thuds hard. It beats real fast and speeds up and this is definitely happening now.

Cas whips off his own shirt, earnest in a way that makes Dean think of things like losing his virginity at sixteen and Bowie on the radio and that feeling that his dick was going to explode if it wasn't touched soon. Cas walks back until his legs hit the bed. It's like they're jello. As soon as they touch the mattress, Cas sinks down and sits so he can watch Dean. His legs are splayed and right away he starts palming at the bulge his zipper's got to be biting into, staring at Dean still, and it's maybe the single hottest thing Dean's ever seen.

Cas lifts his hips off the edge of the bed. A low, needy noise catches in the back of his throat, and Dean can't remember the last time he was this turned on. Dean wants to touch him. God, he really wants to touch him.

He steps in between Cas' parted legs with his heart still knocking against his ribcage. Cas stops touching himself and braces, instead, his hands on either side of the bed, leaning back so he can keep up the eye contact. Dean's seen Cas in the middle of some highly energized, intense situations, but the way he's looking now, the way he's looking at Dean, makes those moments seem downright casual by comparison.

Dean drops forward, his face lined up with Cas'. They're an inch apart like that, maybe two, and Cas' eyes flick from Dean's down to Dean's mouth. All the times he's caught Cas staring before, who the hell knew it could lead them to this. He curls a hand around the back of Cas' head, guiding him closer, and the sheet on the bed drags toward the middle from Cas' tightening grasp.

It's a forced foreplay, and going this slow makes Dean feel like his skin is turning inside out. It sinks down to his bones. Cas closes his eyes and exhales out his nose and trembles a little when Dean snakes his other hand between them, then trembles harder when the button of his jeans is popped open.

Dean, by the way, is unflinchingly heterosexual, save his totally justified crush on Dr. Sexy. Always has been. He's never seen another guy's junk and seriously thought, put that in me. Dean is a man who appreciates boobs and curves and killer legs. Also, vaginas. Dean is super into vaginas, even the weird parts.

Cas' dick pokes out the top of his unzipped jeans and that is when Dean realizes, turns out? He is a little bit gay after all. Because all he can think about is, he wants his mouth on that. He wants to lay Cas flat on his back and climb on top of him and suck him off like the dude's got a sweet candy filling,

So that's what he does, and Cas goes down easy. "Fuck," Dean says. He blows it out quietly, straddling Cas far enough down that, were Dean not in his jeans still, they would know each other pretty damn biblically right now. "Fuck, fuck, fuck. Cas."

Cas gives up gripping the sheet to slide his hands up Dean's thighs instead. He's staring at Dean in a pretty staggering way.

Dean scoots down, forcing Cas to grasp at his shoulders when he leans forward and all of a sudden sucks the tip of Cas' dick into his mouth. It makes Cas buck forward, his dick slipping out and bumping Dean's cheek instead. It smears wetly against his jaw, and Cas groans at that, his fingers grappling to hold on.

Dean lets Cas' dick nudge the side of his face while he curls his fingers through Cas' belt loop and yanks. It takes Cas a minute to get on the same page, but then he's lifting his hips up, letting Dean sit up to pull Cas' pants down his legs. They fall to the floor at the same time that Dean returns to his previous spot, only this time it's better because he lands in between Cas' legs, wedged in with Cas' hairy knees on either side of him.

"Dean," Cas grounds out through his teeth after Dean hasn't immediately picked the blow job back up, "do it."

"Do it?" Dean snorts. "Real nasty bedroom talk you got there, Cas. _Do it_."

Cas tips his head back in frustration. Dean knows this is killing him because his dick's bobbing real pissed off in front of him, teased and untouched. Dean wants to touch it. Fuck, he wants to.

When he wraps his fingers around it, Cas' fingers chase right after his, wrapping around them too like there ain't a chance in hell he's letting Dean let go. That... is way hotter than it has a right to be. Dean's own dick throbs in response, and in protest of being trapped behind jeans.

He starts off slow, letting Cas fuck into their fists, but pretty soon Cas' hips are scissoring off the bed in a sloppy way and his head's rolling back.

"Please," he says, "Dean. Please, please, yes," this mindless babble, and Dean starts jacking him off in earnest, precome easing the way. Cas' other hand comes up and tangles in Dean's hair, and Dean drops forward, mouthing at the head of Cas' dick every time Cas' thrusts brings him close enough.

It's four minutes of that, tops, before Cas stills, then flies apart. He comes quietly but desperate, all the air in his lungs pushed out in one long, silent groan, and normally Dean would be pretty damn pleased with himself, except now that his single-minded mission to get Cas off is over, he's feeling just how neglected his own junk's been.

Cas doesn't let him feel that way long. Dean's still got his hand wrapped around the guy, sweaty and a little cramped, and sticky with come, when he finds himself hauled forward. Cas grabs Dean by the backs of his elbows and tugs. Then Cas grabs Dean somewhere much nicer and, swear to god, Dean's brain shorts out for more than a few seconds.

Maybe minutes, because there is a weird jump between the time Cas is rubbing roughly at him through his pants, and him being divested of said pants. Mostly divested, anyway. They wind up bunched down near his ankles, his boxer briefs too, and when he's jolted back into the moment he's atop Cas in a nice, naked, sprawled out way. He's pretty much humping him, is what he's doing, his head bowed, their legs tangled together, and even though Cas has gone mostly soft, it still makes his stomach roll with pleasure every time they line up and drag against each other.

Cas gets a hand between them again, and even with the weird angle he's able to get a good rhythm going for Dean. He's breathing as hard and heavy as Dean is, and when Dean dips forward and puts his forehead against Cas' neck, Cas turns into it and breathes out hotly against him. His other hand curls into the hair at the base of Dean's neck, holding on possessively, and that's it. That's what does it for him. Dean speeds up and loses his pace and he comes with his mouth open, small noises stuttering out until he's left panting Cas' name

 

&

 

Dean stares up at the ceiling. "So."

Cas says, "Dean," and it's not exactly the most rousing post-coital tone he's ever heard.

And then divine intervention happens in the form of vomit.

Sam's vomit, to be precise.

It's a good thing, too, because Dean is lying next to Cas with the crazy ass thought that future-him and Cas must be fuck buddies of some sort, or sleepover pals or whatever the kids are calling it, because there's no way that was their first time, and instead of it sending him packing, it's weirdly calming, like, okay, alright, he can put a name to this thing he and Cas have.

He can't say that out loud, though, because he is nowhere near drunk enough for that, so when Sam starts ralphing, it is a diversion and opportunity to bail quickly seized.

Cas doesn't seem thrilled by Dean getting up to tend to his brother, but he doesn't ask him not to either.

Downstairs, Sam is a pathetic sight. He's halfway to falling off the couch, slumped over and unaware that those lady tresses he's so proud of are trailing in his own pile of vomit. Dean's stomach tumbles around at the sight, but he's cleaned up after the kid before. This is nothing compared to the monster flu of '96 that knocked Sam flat on his ass for a solid week; seriously, vomit everywhere.

Cas flicks on the light behind him, surprising Dean. He didn't know he was followed down. The idea that Cas is here to help out and take care of his brother makes Dean pause and feel real damn sentimental.

Then Sam rolls forward, noticing his company. "Dean?" He grunts and tries to sit up, but there's a reason you're not supposed to drink and operate heavy machinery at the same time. There is too much weight for him to heft around on so little brain functioning, and he winds up flopping sideways.

Dean gets to his brother's side before he faceplants off the couch. "Woah there, drunky," he says, tugging him back into place. Cas disappears down the hall while Dean helps Sam get settled.

"Hi," he says, smiling at him.

Dean obliges with a quick grin of his own, but he's mostly busy trying to untangle himself out of the affectionate hold Sam's somehow locked him in.

"You're not my real brother," Sam tells him, leaning in to whisper this privately, "but I like you. I," he emphasizes, patting Dean's face, "like you."

"Lucky me," Dean quips, dodging Sam's grabby hands, right around the same time Cas comes back with an arm full of towels. And thank god for that, too, because the smell was getting to him.

When Sam sees Cas, he flings an arm out and manages to snare him into some weird octopus hold that forces him to crouch down beside Dean.

"Dean and Castiel," he says in the drunkest, sappiest, happiest voice. "I should tell you this now. Listen, I have to confess." He drops his voice to that stage-whisper again, pulling Dean and Cas both closer. "I love you guys."

Dean ducks out of Sam's arms with an eye roll. "Alright," he says, pushing Sam to lie down.

Sam lets go of Cas as well, too drunk to fight the manhandling. He settles back and exhales loudly, patting Dean one last time.

Cas gets the vomit all cleaned up before long, and then the two of them are able to quietly step out of the room, though Sam does murmur and push his face into the cushions when the light turns off.

Cas dumps the gross towels in the hallway to be dealt with later and heads straight for the bathroom upstairs. Dean waits, watching Sam just a while longer.

When he joins Cas, Cas is rinsing his hands off in the sink. Their eyes meet in the mirror and he stares at Dean with a look that implies the night turned on them real fast, but there's also fondness there, tentative and cautious.

Dean is crap when it comes to words, especially when those words have to mean something. It doesn't help that he's been here before, spilling his guts to Cas, and he got burned. 'Don't make me lose you too' didn't work way back when. 'I need you' wasn't enough.

Cas turns the water off and stands in front of Dean. He's got marks up the side of his neck Dean knows he put there himself. "Cas," he says without a clue for what comes next.

Cas slides his hand across Dean's jaw and cups it warmly. Dean softens into it, hurting and wanting in equal parts. His eyes close and he fights against the urge to back off, to deny himself.

It lasts only a moment and then Cas breaks away, slipping past Dean in the doorway.

"Hey," Dean calls after him. He steadies his voice. "Stay."

Cas does.

 

&

 

"God, who are you," Amelia says to him a couple days later.

He's flipping burgers in the kitchen and whistling that damn mattress warehouse jingle that torments his brain. Amelia's accusation triggers a mini internal crisis when he jumps to the conclusion that she's finally caught onto the time travel, but she only gapes at him, marveling over his good mood.

"Not that I'm complaining. Or trying to jinx anything. Or imply anything. I'm not. But, just. Look at you."

Dean glances down. So maybe the apron was a bad idea, but he'd found it curled up in the pantry as a gag gift, and Cas had seemed pretty into it when Dean joked about putting it on.

Amelia rolls her eyes, nailing Sam's usual brand of nagging like she inherited it with the family name. "Not the apron, doofus. You!" She gestures more enthusiastically. "Your eyes have cartoon sparkles in them and, Dean, I don't want to alarm you, but your frown? Has been turned upside down."

He scoffs at that and does a poor job stifling his smile. He can't help it that Cas gave him one hell of a blow job mere minutes before company arrived and the endorphins are still kicking around.

"Chop or scoot," he tells her, waving his spatula at the line up of vegetables she's supposed to be cutting.

"Or you could just grunt and swing your club around," she says, but she does listen, slicing up some potatoes. "Because you're a caveman and I find your avoidance barbaric," she clarifies.

Cas comes into the kitchen to get a beer for Sam, and Dean has flashbacks of himself limp against the sink counter while Cas knelt in front of him, sucking him off so awesomely Dean's fairly certain his brain's pleasure center now houses only that blow job's memory.

"Seriously," Amelia says to Cas. "He looks different, right?" Dean throws on a winning smile for show, but Amelia sees right through it. "It's like he's happy or something."

Cas stares at him and, so slightly it's barely noticeable at all, curls the corners of his mouth upwards into a smile. It gets sharper as Cas grows smug. "I had noticed."

"I'm a freakin' joy to be around, so can it already."

Amelia laughs to herself. "There he is."

Cas moves past purposely close to Dean, with a clap to his shoulder that is patronizing but also full of meaning. Dean leans into it for a second, then bats Cas away when it turns into teasing at his expense.

"Yuck it up," he tells Amelia and Cas both.

 

&

 

Sweat is beading at Dean's hairline, big, fat drops of it rolling down the side of his face and into his eyes. He keeps having to reach up and wipe it away. He could use a damn glass of lemonade right now. He could also use a working set of tools.

He's prying up that busted twelfth step on the staircase, working the nails loose with the claw part of a hammer. It should be easy work, but the air conditioner's broken, the house is stuffy, and Dean is literally bathing in his own bodily fluids.

Cas appears at the top of the stairs.

Dean can already sense the head quirk, the confused squint. From Cas' angle, it must look like Dean's beating up on the staircase. And losing.

"It's broke," he grunts out, deflecting the questions before they start. He finally pries the nail loose and, victorious, wields it at Cas, proud as hell.

Cas doesn't share the same enthusiasm, but still, Dean smirks at him, waggles his brow, and chucks the freed nail into the junk pile before working on another.

Cas slides past and his only acknowledgment is to ruffle Dean's hair.

"Could use some freakin' LEMONADE!" Dean yells after him.

 

&

 

"Hey, so. The ghost? I know what it is," Sam tells him over the phone.

Dean perks. His attention getting snatched does the same for Cas, and pretty soon they're sharing the same space on the couch so they can both listen in.

"Remember that box Christine gave me, for Amelia? There was this old doll inside. Apparently Christine got it from a yard sale. Guess who's."

It takes a second, but then: "Vic number two," Dean realizes.

"And I bet there was some kinda estate sale for vic number one, too."

"Okay, but. Creepy old doll? Who in their right mind would buy something like that?"

"It's an antique, Dean."

"So. Antiquers," he throws out there.

"Listen, I'm home now and there's definitely spirit activity, but Amelia--"

"Thinks Casper's not real. Got ya." That explains Sam's hush-hush voice. He's probably hiding out in the bathroom, faking a leak. "I'm on my way," he tells him before he remembers he doesn't have a car. Cas realizes this at the same time Dean's does, and their eyes meet. Without Dean needing to even ask, Cas nods. "Cas too. Get out of the house, tell her you're, I don't know, tell her you're hankering for that soylent green crap you guys always eat."

 

&

 

Dean rings Christine up on the drive over.

"That doll you gave Amelia," he says as soon as she answers, "you know who's it was?"

"I... have no idea what you're talking about. Hello? Who is this?"

"The doll! The antique. You got it at a yard sale, gave it to Amelia."

"Dean?"

"Son of a..." Dean mutters under his breath, and he's about to get a little less nice when she seems to catch on that this is important and starts providing info.

"Okay, yeah. I got it because it was Miss Miller's. It was at some guy's yard sale, but as soon as I saw it I knew it was her's because I remember it from when I was little and she used to have these meetings at her house for, wow, I don't even remember. Girl Scouts? A lot of us girls would go, and we always wanted to play with the doll--"

"You're absolutely sure?"

"Yes. Completely. Why, what's going--"

Dean hangs up and pockets his phone. "'Least we know who's bones to torch. Turns out crazy cat-lady had nine lives after all."

Cas gives Dean an unimpressed look.

"Shut up," Dean says.

 

&

 

It probably says something about Dean's life that the first time he goes inside his brother's house -- his brother's house from the future -- it's to spook a ghost.

Dean bursts through the front door, shotgun already locked and loaded. Cas is right behind him manning the flashlight when Dean's cell chirps. He gestures in a one-armed shrug for Cas to reach inside his jacket pocket and pull the thing out, which Cas does.

"Sam," Cas says right away, then goes quiet while Sam squawks on the other end.

As they disappear down a darkened hall together, wooden floor creaking ominously under their feet, Dean hisses, "Tell him he's got to burn the bones."

"Sam," Cas says, in a way that clearly means he's having to cut off Sam's rambling, "you need to find the grave site of--"

All of a sudden the lights zap on and off and Cas gets flung to the other side of the house. Dean shouts, "Cas!" as Cas crumples against the wall.

He whirls around, completely in the dark now because the flashlight Cas had a hold on is currently shining a halo of light uselessly against the floorboards. He raises his shotgun, whispering, "Cas, you okay?" while he creeps that way.

"I'm fine," he hears, though it's groggy. He also hears Sam, faraway and tinny, still on the line.

"Tell him about the damn bones," Dean says, trying to squint through the dark. He slides up against the nearest wall and flicks the light switch that he finds, but nothing turns on. "Awesome," he mutters under his breath.

Castiel's rattling off info about the ghost while Dean ducks into what he guesses must be an office or spare bedroom. It's kind of hard to see, but he thinks he can just make out a bed, or a desk.

"If I was an old creepy doll, where would I be," he murmurs as he goes. He uses the barrel of his shotgun to creak open a closet door, but a quick peek inside tells him that's a dead end.

Then Cas calls after him and Dean's sprinting back in that direction thinking maybe Cas found it first. He runs into the door frame on his way out and has to grit his teeth against the pain that immediately shoots up that whole left side of him.

"Cas," he calls once he's back where they started, left shoulder still stinging.

There's no sign of him.

Then something creeps up from behind. Dean spins, trigger finger trigger-happy, but he stops himself short at the last second.

"Dean," Cas says calmly, standing there.

Dean drops his ready-to-shoot stance and exhales his relief. Also, annoyance. "Son of a bitch. Make a sound or something, geez."

"Apologies," Cas says, not sounding very sorry at all. Dean feels a tug at his coat sleeve and then Cas starts leading him towards one of the rooms that splits off from the hallway, back near the front of the house.

"Sam taking care of the bones?" he asks, keeping his voice low. Not like the ghost won't be able to sense them anyway, but he'd rather not risk a repeat of before.

"Yes," is all Cas says. Dean feels a second tug at his jacket and then a weight in his pocket. His phone being dropped back where Cas got it.

"Sam also mentioned they've been storing the doll--"

That's as far as Cas gets before the ghost catches on. A front window blows out and shatters, sending shards of glass flying. They're able to duck out of the way and shield themselves from most of it, but then the wind kicks up. The ghost is working itself into full-blown poltergeist mode.

Over the noise, Dean shouts, "We need to find it!"

Suddenly the space behind Cas ripples. The ghost manifests completely, showing itself. About damn time too. Dean raises his shotgun to blast it into a temporary oblivion but it's quicker than him, shoving a non-corporeal hand straight through Cas' back and out his chest. All Dean has time to see is Cas' wide, fearful eyes before Cas is being chucked clear across the room again. He goes down hard, slumping in front of that broken window.

"You _bitc_ \--" Dean gets out right before the ghost bursts in his direction. He finds himself propelled backwards, pressed against the hallway wall against his will, his breath slowly being choked out of him. The ghost grins cruelly.

_Bitch_ , Dean thinks very clearly in his head just before he pulls the trigger on his gun. A round goes off, making the ghost shriek and disappear once more. Dean sags from the wall with a deep inhale, trying to get back all that lost oxygen.

"Cas, you okay?" he asks through a wince. His phone ringing cuts off whatever Cas might've said, and Dean snakes a hand in his coat, tugs the thing out. "You burn the bones?"

"Yeah, you burn the doll?"

"I can't find the damn thing."

"It's in the spare room."

"Spare room," Dean mutters, pushing off in where he thinks that direction might be. "I seem like I know where the spare room's at?"

"Where are you now?"

"A hall, Sam. Long, skinny thing with walls on the side. That narrow it done for you?"

Together they're able to find the doll and give it the burning it deserves. In a controlled fire, of course, inside one of those mini garbage cans, because Amelia would probably beat them senseless if she came home and her house was burnt down.

Dean leaves the flames to it, heading back out for Cas with Sam still on the phone.

"What'd you tell her anyway? She think you're some kinda freak now?"

"I, uh. Excused myself. To the bathroom."

"You do realize, right, this whole time, she's gonna think you've been on the--" He cuts himself off, though, when he sees Cas still crumpled on the floor. "Shit," he says, rushing to him. He wedges the phone between his ear and shoulder. "Shit, Cas."

"Dean?" Sam says.

"Cas, hey," Dean says, rolling Cas over. He's barely conscious, and Dean is thinking of making some _seriously, what kind of wimpy ex-angel are you_ comment at his expense when his hand slips in something wet on the floor. He doesn't even have to look to know that it's blood, because it's warm and what else could it be?

"Dean, what's wrong?" he hears from Sam.

"Cas, he's hurt, he's bleeding--" There's a chunk of glass poking out of Cas' back, and it should be a relief because it's small, it's nothing, but when he rolls Cas back over, he notices Cas has got a matching shard coming out that same side in the front, which means the thing's gone all the way through him.

Dean rucks up Cas' shirt for a better view, as much as he's able to. It's soaked, clinging wetly to his chest and stomach.

" _Dean_ ," Sam barks, making it clear it's not the first time he's called after him.

"Get here," Dean tells him, "get here now," he says and then hangs up. The phone gets thrown aside.

"Son of a bitch," Dean swears, pressing down around the wound. Blood seeps through his fingers right away, a shit ton of it, enough that dread and fear uncoil inside him, but it's Castiel's non-reaction that sends his heart ricocheting straight up his throat.

Cas is staring blankly at the ceiling, unseeingly so, even when Dean crouches closer and drops into his line of sight. "Cas, c'mon, c'mon, you're okay, everything's going to be--"

Blood gurgles up out of Cas' mouth on a cough that turns into choking.

"Dammit, Cas," Dean pleads, putting both his hands more firmly over the injury. Cas' pulse is weak under his palms, barely even there. "Come on!" he shouts. Cas blinks and tries to follow the sound of Dean's voice. "Cas! Hey, buddy, I'm right here. You gotta look at me, you gotta stay with me--"

Cas coughs up more blood when he tries to speak. Dean winds an arm underneath his shoulder, hauling him closer, and Cas goes, lifelessly and limp. "Please," Dean hears himself say.

"Dean," Cas finally manages. And Dean knows what it is. He knows and it pisses him off, because it's not supposed to be like this, this was a ghost for fuck's sake.

"Shut up," he tells him, pressing almost punishingly to staunch the blood flow. Cas' mouth falls open, only no sound comes out. Dean snaps at him anyway. "Stow it, I'm serious. Shut the hell up."

Cas only stares at him. There's a glossiness there, like he's not really seeing what's in front of him anymore. He looks so damn peaceful all of a sudden, so calm and at rest, that something feral starts thrashing around inside Dean's chest.

Cas blinks and all the breath goes out of him.

Cas blinks again, and doesn't open his eyes.

 

&

 

(Weird thing about Purgatory? There was a whole lot of downtime. Not that they weren't continuously starring in their very own monster slash film, and often, but just like any hunt, they caught their fair share of breathers, which meant they could hole up somewhere until it was time to move again.

They're having one of those time outs now.

Benny sat across from Dean, up against a tree same as him, though Benny had his knife out, whittling away at some thick piece of wood whereas Dean had his head tipped back, eyes burning with tiredness. He slept there. It usually came up on him all at once, grabbing at him from inside when he was too tired to fight it anymore, and he wouldn't have wrestled against it so much if it didn't remind him of Hell, like being pulled somewhere he didn't want to go.

"Never said how you and--" Benny made a whistling noise, knife flicking out to where Cas was perched at the edge of some invisible line he was patrolling, a good twenty, thirty feet away, "--met. Figure there's some sorta story there."

Dean scoffed through his nose. It wasn't a noise that shut down conversation, but it wasn't an invite to go snooping into his life history either.

"Come on, now," Benny drawled, getting it. He carved in deep and a chipped off piece of wood went lurching into the dead grass at their feet. "We're all friends here. I know how I met you. You know how you met me. What I don't know is how you wrangled yourself an angel."

Cas was oblivious to the conversation. Didn't mean Dean felt comfortable talking about him like he wasn't a shout away.

Benny made another sound, this time like Dean was clamming up for no good reason, like he was gonna go ahead and presume Dean was protecting Cas' virtue or whatever. It made something in his stomach clamp up, something else in his throat tighten.

Dean cleared whatever it was out and said, "He pulled me out of Hell." It came out hard and defensive even to his own ears, and fuck if he knew why, because it wasn't like that was a greeting card tagline of a whirlwind romance, but it still felt like he was exposing something he shouldn't have. Probably because Cas was a clingy bastard who still cast distrustful eyes Benny's way, and sharing that without his consent would get him all fussy, but whatever.

Benny let out a praiseful whistle and went back to hacking away at his wood block. As far as Dean could tell, he was making himself another knife. They went through plenty of those. "I get it. Man, I get it."

That felt like a dig somehow, like Benny was poking at something that wasn't sitting right with Dean. He leveled his gaze, meeting Benny head on. "Meaning?"

"I know a little somethin' about obligation myself."

Something about that word rolled around not-quite-right in Dean's head. It wasn't obligation that tied him to Cas. It never had been, not on his side anyway.

Benny picked up on it, his eyebrows lifting high. He laughed, light and rattling. "You got complications inside complications, brother," he said almost happily. He shook his head and chucked a little more with his knife. "He pulled you outta Hell. I get it."

Dean ducked so Cas showed up in his peripheral. He was like a damn watch dog, always so alert.

"Hell, he's saved my sorry ass a couple dozen times after that, too," he told Benny, gruff, without really knowing why he was saying it.

"Figured as much," Benny gave back, nice and easy. Something about it -- the low tone, maybe, or the lull of his drawl -- kept Dean talking. Words spilled out of him he never bothered to say out loud before.

"There were so many times we had our necks on the line, man. Me and Sam both, and Cas. He always came through. Always in the nick of time. He, uh, kinda broke rank for us. For Sam. For me."

"Like I said," Benny told him. "I get it."

Dean almost startled, pulled out of his thoughts like he was, because this was bringing up some heavy stuff he never bothered to sit and pick at before. It was weird to talk about Cas like that. It was even weirder to realize how deep his gratitude ran, and strange, too, to feel that point where gratitude trailed off and something else, something bigger and more complicated, picked up.

"Loyalty's a useful thing," Benny said.

Loyalty. That about covered it. Then again, it didn't even come close.

"Yeah," Dean said. He ignored how wrecked that sounded. How it cracked. "Loyalty.")

 

&

 

Cas is gone.

Literally gone. Cas and everything else, it's gone, and Dean is somewhere else all of a sudden, transported without him even noticing how.

Dean looks up, heart already thrumming wild in his chest, and feels it jump anew because Cas is standing across the room. His Cas. Fresh out of Purgatory Cas. Holy shit.

"And that, Castiel," he hears from far away, and at first Dean isn't able to tear his eyes off of Cas, who's staring at some point on the ground with his head bowed down like he's done something worth feeling like crap over, but eventually he does and he sees a woman at a desk who says, "is the lesson you needed to learn. Now do you understand?"

Dean stares. Dean does more than stare, Dean flat out gawks, his mind slinging back-and-forth thoughts like an old Abbott and Costello bit. He doesn't know who the woman is, but judging by the business suit get-up and the squeaky clean, sterile white surroundings of the room they're somehow in, it's an angel.

"Cas?" he says, eyes back on Castiel again. He has to work his way around a lump in his throat, emotions dialed way up past ten. "That you?" Dean's still kneeling, still on the floor, but all the blood is gone. Cas' blood.

The woman smiles. There's something straight up condescending about it. "Mr. Winchester. I apologize for the unorthodox approach, but after that little... we'll call it a sneak peek, I think even you'll agree that where Castiel belongs is here. In Heaven."

So, angels. Douchebag angels and their goddamn douchebaggery. Anger rolls through him like it's been coiled back tight then let loose, and he uses its momentum to finally get to his feet, slow and cautious.

"Lady," he starts, only to get cut off.

"Naomi," she corrects, that patronizing smile still there. Her hands clasp primly in front of her.

"I don't care. What," he says, glancing pointedly, and alarmed, around him, "the hell is going on here? Cas, any time you wanna chime in, that'd be great." And then it hits him. "Wait, is this. Cas, is this your Heaven? The, uh, personal, customized kind?"

If anything, Naomi's grin becomes tighter and Cas' gaze sinks lower.

"This," she says, "is Castiel's home. Welcome."

"I don't get it."

"Castiel was..." She stops to find her words. "Let's just say, he was ready to sign off on something he didn't fully comprehend. I think he does now. Don't you, Castiel?"

Again, Cas says nothing, which is starting to both freak Dean out and piss him off. A silent, cowed Cas is never a good sign. It means the angels have got him by the short hairs.

Dean tears his eyes off of Cas once more, adopting some bravado. "Still doesn't explain a damn thing to me, or why you sons-a-bitches have Cas in the first place."

Naomi unclasps her hands and falls comfortably against the backrest of her chair. She scrutinizes him, making him feel exploited and gross, and it's only when being creeped out turns to anger that she deems him deserving of a response.

"Castiel needed to be taught a lesson. And so we taught him one."

Calm enough to be threatening, Dean says, "I got thrown down the friggin' rabbit hole so you dicks could teach a _lesson_?"

"You're a loyal man, Mr. Winchester," she says instead of an answer. He's been called a lot worse before. Doesn't mean that sits well with him. "I can see now why Castiel might become... muddled." That word repeats loud in his head, and he thinks he might know where this is heading, because, yeah, muddled. They are that. That to a freaking fault. "And loyalty can often mimic other... _things_ , as you are so very aware of. Friendship. Family. Obligation. Love."

With that last one, her smile sharpens. Her eyes harden. Dean feels the word _love_ go straight to his gut, where it tugs at him, mean like a taunt, or a craving.

Dean stands taller, staring her down over the edge of his nose. "Yeah. So?" All Naomi does to respond is watch him, waiting.

Briefly, Castiel flicks a look Dean's way. It's small, he goes right back to the staring contest he's having with the floor almost straight away, but it does for Dean what spinach does for Popeye, what a phone booth and skimpy tights do for Superman. It fills him with something inside that makes him feel damn near invincible. Insanity, probably, but he embraces it and lets it guide him Cas' way.

Naomi watches, eyes riveted, like he's some animal stupid enough to try crossing a busy highway. When he's not immediately blown to pieces or flicked away like a bug, he stops caring about the scary angel lady and starts for Cas more earnestly.

He expects to be instantaneously smoted the second he reaches him, especially because the first thing he does is haul Cas into a hug so enthusiastically given, Cas lets out a grunt when the air's knocked clean out of him.

"Castiel," Naomi reprimands, like Cas is the one who initiated it. And then like he's the one who should be breaking it when it goes on for too long. But Dean fists his hands in Cas' trenchcoat -- he's never been happier to see the dumb thing -- and refuses to let go.

Slowly Cas' hands come up around him, settling stiffly against Dean's shoulder blades, but that? That is a returned hug. Dean squeezes Cas closer, and it's like that's the last thing Cas needed, because then he's clutching at Dean like Dean's clutching at him.

Naomi's voice is sharper this time. "Castiel! Remember yourself. Remember what you are, where you belong! You are one of God's obedient--"

Castiel breaks away, though he stays close enough to Dean that he's a solid line of warmth alongside him.

"No," Cas says. It's pretty much a growl. "I am nothing like that. Not anymore."

Dean isn't dumb enough to smirk at Naomi, except. Okay, he's definitely that dumb, because he's smirking. Totally boastful, too, because it makes him all tingly inside when Cas gets assertive like that.

The lights in the room flicker on and off, sending sparks flying, and Dean thinks, okay. No smirking. But it's Cas Naomi is focused on as she lifts from her chair, gaze locked squarely on his.

"You would still give yourself over to this human, after everything you've been shown?"

Dean swallows and glances at Castiel and feels unworthy. But Cas holds his head high and says, "Yes." Easy as that.

"You saw your future. Look at what your loyalty gets you."

"I don't care," Cas says anyway, but Dean does. Oh, Dean cares. Dean cares a lot. Because it wasn't that long ago -- minutes, really -- that Cas bled out in his arms, that he got taken down by a friggin' _ghost_ of all things. Cas does this, he's going to live in a shitty house and work a shitty job and his consolation prize is, what? Dean?

"Cas," he says. He can't let that happen. He gets it now; this is his chance to not screw up someone else's life for a change. This is where Castiel has a choice, but Dean can make sure it's the right one. "Don't do it. You can't, don't give this up."

"Dean..." Cas looks and sounds absolutely destroyed. Like he's being betrayed, like he thought Dean was right there with him and now he's being left hung to dry.

"Do you see, Castiel?" Naomi moves in close. "Do you see what faith in this man brings you? It is only pain. Here in Heaven you will atone for your sins. For the thousands you have slain."

Dean feels Cas wince. Naomi lasers in on it.

"That's right. Did you think that's been forgotten? Forgiven?" She's close enough that Dean's prickly all over, his skin crawling in every place not pressed up close to Cas.

"You have rebelled," she says, with a slow, predatory lilt, "you have lost faith, and you have slaughtered. This is where you belong. It is here you will find redemption. That peace you so crave. So," she concludes much more pleasantly. She winds up in front of Dean and Castiel both, pitying them. "Now we say goodbye to Mr. Winchester. You will live life fully," she tells Dean. "You will live heroically. And you will do so knowing you spared Castiel of an unworthy fate."

Naomi lifts her hand to snap her fingers and whisk him back to the real world. And Dean's bracing for it. Dean is hunkered down and waiting for that weightless rush, only it never comes.

"I said _no_ ," Castiel says, so forcefully Dean feels the room shake.

He's not the only one who's surprised by it. Naomi sends a challenging look Cas' way to bookend the _seriously what the hell is wrong with you_? one Dean's sending.

"If it is my choice, I'm going. With Dean," Castiel adds, as if that much wasn't already given.

"Cas," Dean starts, but Cas whips his head around, all kinds of intense and stubborn like it's just that simple. And, hell. Maybe it is. Maybe Dean's a selfish bastard for wanting it too, but he wants it so bad. And him and Cas, the two of them together, they've always ripped up the script. Why stop now?

He holds Cas' gaze just enough to let Cas know he's right there with him. They'll do this then, and if Cas is in, shit. Dean's all in too.

Once Cas gets the confirmation he's looking for, he fixes Naomi with one bad ass glare.

"It's done."

Far from comforting, Naomi gives them a slow, cryptic smile that has Dean grabbing at Cas' sleeve, holding on. "Very well," she says. "Let's try this again."

Once more the world drops out from underneath Dean.

 

&

 

Wind whips around him, fast and so loud he can barely hear himself think over it. Right in front of them the portal is a big, bright, glowing tear in the universe.

There's this second where Dean nearly trips, where it feels like the ground is moving beneath him, all because he gets hit with a whammy of deja vu.

He looks back at Cas, and Cas is looking at him already, and he's asking without saying anything if Cas felt it too. There's something about the way Cas is staring at him. Something almost familiar.

The portal zaps noisily and Dean remembers, right. Heroic exit. It'd be awesome if they could manage to not screw that up. He hauls ass up this rocky, uphill ridge until he's right there in front of it; it crackles like it wants to burn him alive, which would just be Dean's luck.

When he looks behind him again, the gravel beneath Cas' feet is giving way and Cas goes down hard, falling to his hands and knees.

Dean steps into the portal, thinking he's got to delay this thing somehow. He winds up holding his hand back out for Cas, stretching it as far as he can make it. "Come on!" he shouts. The wind eats it right up, so he makes his voice louder. "We gotta go!"

Cas lifts his gaze and eyes the lifeline Dean's offering. There's another split second where Dean feels a roll of uneasiness. He might just have to drag the bastard out with him. But then Cas lobs his hand at Dean and grabs ahold of his wrist and all Dean's thinking then is _thank god_ and _let's get the hell out of Dodge._

Only, Cas shoves Dean's hand away.

He shouts, "Go!" when Dean looks back with shock. Cas' face is set with determination, like it was always meant to end this way. "Dean, _go_!"

Dean is still staring when the portal yanks him through to the other side, leaving Cas behind.

 

&

 

A week later Dean's in Montana, tackling Sam in Rufus' cabin. Right off the bat he runs them through the tests. Demon, leviathan, shifter. Sam passes them all and asks, after, about Purgatory, about Cas.

"Things got pretty hairy towards the end," Dean tells him, flashbacking hard, "and he... just let go."

The memory's already blurring in his head. Soon it'll be rewritten entirely.

He will remember Cas holding on. More than that, Dean will remember himself letting go.

 

&

 

Naomi, after the first attempt to sway Castiel from taking the wrong path had proved ineffectual, is given new orders.

Rescue Castiel from Purgatory and reunite him with the Winchesters, who will, by any force necessary, fail to close the gates of both Heaven and Hell.

This time, he is not to be given free will.

This time, Castiel is to obey.

 

&

 

The end.

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaaaaand, cue season 8!
> 
> I first started writing this when Naomi was a shady character we knew nothing about, and before the Men of Letters was even a thing, which is why it gets no mention (sorry, bat cave!) I hope it otherwise feels genuine to the show and characters.


End file.
